' 


Baaaar  Semicentennial  Series 


ELIZABETHAN  TRANSLATIONS  FROM  THE  ITAL- 
IAN. By  Mary  Augusta  Scott,  Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vas- 
sar,  1876),  Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Smith 
College. 

SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 
By  Laura  J.  Wylie,  Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vassar,  1877),  Pro- 
fessor of  English  in  Vassar  College. 

THE  LEARNED  LADY  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY.  By  Myra  Reynolds,  Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vas- 
sar, 1880),  Professor  of  English  Literature  in  Chicago 
University.    [In  preparation.'] 

THE  CUSTOM  OF  DRAMATIC  ENTERTAINMENT  IN 
SHAKESPEARE'S  PLAYS.  By  Orie  J.  Hatcher, 
Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vassar,  1888),  Formerly  Associate  Pro- 
fessor of  Comparative  Literature  in  Bryn  Mawr  Col- 
lege.   [In  preparation.] 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  STUDY  OF  VARIABLE 
STARS.  By  Caroline  E.  Furness,  Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vas- 
sar, 1891),  Professor  of  Astronomy  in  Vassar  College. 

MOVEMENT  AND  MENTAL  IMAGERY.  By  Mar- 
garet Floy  Washburn,  Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vassar,  1891), 
Professor  of  Psychology  in  Vassar  College.  [In  prep- 
aration.] 

BRISSOT  DE  WARVILLE  :  A  STUDY  IN  THE  HIS- 
TORY OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  By  Eloise 
Ellery,  Ph.D.  (A.B.  Vassar,  1897),  Associate  Profes- 
sor of  History  in  Vassar  College. 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

Boston  and  New  York 


SOCIAL  STUDIES 
IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN 
ENGLISH  LITERATURE 


BY 
LAURA  JOHNSON  WYLIE,  Ph.D.  (Yale) 

Professor  of  English  in  Vassar  College 


BOSTON   AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

■£foc  llitcrisiDc  prcdg  CambnDQC 
1916 


COPYRIGHT,   1916,  BY  LAURA  JOHNSON  WYLIE 


ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  January  iqib 


PUBLISHED   IN  HONOR   OF  THE 

FIFTIETH  ANNIVERSARY 
OF   THE 

FOUNDING  OF  VASSAR  COLLEGE 
1865-1915 


PREFACE 

The  unity  of  the  following  studies  consists  in  their  common 
viewpoint,  each  essay  tracing  the  relation  between  a  certain 
body  of  literature  and  some  aspects  of  the  social  conditions  out 
of  which  it  grew.  This  unity  of  idea  is  due  to  no  attempt  to 
illustrate  the  now  generally  accepted  theory  that  literature  is 
essentially  social  in  nature  and  function,  but  results  solely  from 
the  pedestrian  effort  to  "  see  the  object  as  in  itself  it  really  is."  In 
the  history  of  the  essay  and  in  the  English  poetry  of  the  Revolu- 
tion the  connection  between  literature  and  life  on  which  the 
criticism  of  our  day  emphatically  insists  is  so  obvious  that  it 
seems  impossible  to  come  to  a  full  understanding  either  of  this 
art-form  or  of  these  poets  without  recognizing  the  social  affili- 
ations of  each. 

Though  conscious  of  many  debts  to  many  friends  in  writing 
these  papers,  I  can  mention  only  three.  Miss  Julia  B.  Anthony 
and  Miss  Katharine  Warren  have  given  me  invaluable  aid  in 
reading  proof,  and  Professor  Gertrude  Buck,  for  many  years 
my  associate  in  the  English  Department  of  Vassar  College,  has 
been  indefatigable  in  criticism  and  suggestion. 


CONTENTS 

The  English  Essay:  A  Study  in  Literary  Development       1 

The  England  of  George  Crabbe 75 

The  Social  Philosophy  of  Wordsworth  .         .         .         .115 

Shelley's  Democracy 167 

Index 213 


SOCIAL  STUDIES 
IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY 
A  Study  in  Literary  Development 


SOCIAL   STUDIES 
IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

THE    ENGLISH    ESSAY 

A  Study  in  Literary  Development 

For  the  last  hundred  years  the  essay  has  rivaled  even  the 
novel  in  the  breadth  of  its  appeal  and  in  the  variety  of  the 
interests  it  represents.  Critics,  it  is  true,  ordinarily  place  its 
golden  age  in  the  past;  and  they  are  right  in  so  doing  if  they 
judge  either  by  the  urbane  grace  of  the  periodical  essayists  or 
by  the  profound  humanity  of  a  Bacon  and  a  Montaigne.  But 
the  essay  holds  its  place  to-day  far  less  by  virtue  of  the  excel- 
lence of  any  single  writer  or  the  distinction  of  any  school  than 
because  it  has,  in  the  years  since  the  French  Revolution,  be- 
come in  a  deeper  sense  than  ever  before  the  abstract  and  brief 
chronicle  of  its  time.  Created  in  the  closing  years  of  the  Ren- 
aissance by  thoughtful  observers  of  life  and  soon  pressed  into 
the  service  of  an  ever-widening  circle  of  readers,  it  became, 
with  the  diffusion  of  knowledge  and  the  increase  of  curiosity  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  a  vehicle  of  expression  hardly  less  uni- 
versal than  fairy-tale  and  ballad  had  been  in  primitive  times. 
It  is  at  present,  in  fact,  the  one  form  of  literature  which  may 
fairly  be  considered  a  useful  as  well  as  a  fine  art.  The  journal- 
ist finds  it  the  most  trustworthy  of  his  tools;  the  teacher 
chooses  it  as  the  type  of  composition  most  valuable  in  training 
for  general  efficiency;  every  worker,  however  practical  his 
task,  is  able  through  it  most  quickly  to  socialize  his  gain  in 
knowledge.  And  it  is  because  the  essay  has  thus  in  a  very  lit- 
eral sense  passed  from  study  and  salon  to  schoolroom  and 
workshop,  from  the  philosopher  to  the  man  in  the  street,  that 
it  can  vindicate  its  claim  to  be  called  the  characteristic  literary 


*    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

art  of  the  nineteenth  century.  For  a  form  of  literature,  like  an 
idea,  belongs  only  to  those  who  use  it,  even  appreciation  of  it 
depending  on  some  degree  of  actual  or  potential  technical  abil- 
ity. In  Elizabethan  England  the  poet  tried  his  skill  in  a  sonnet 
to  be  read  by  his  fellow  sonneteers,  the  critic  shared  his  note- 
book with  the  cultured  fellow  critics  who  made  up  the  circle  at 
once  of  his  acquaintance  and  of  his  audience.  To-day  profes- 
sional essayists  of  all  sorts  write  on  all  subjects  of  human  con- 
cern for  people  of  all  conditions.  Furthermore,  the  essay  has 
been  adopted  as  a  medium  of  communication  by  the  rank  and 
file  of  intelligent  workers,  and  thus  has  been  made  as  never 
before  an  integral  part  of  the  intellectual  and  practical  life  of 
our  time. 

The  ambiguities  and  contradictions  in  current  conceptions 
of  the  essay  would  at  first  sight  go  far  to  justify  the  contention 
of  certain  critics  that  any  classification  of  literary  genres  is 
impossible.  These  conceptions,  in  spite  of  many  superficial 
differences,  fall  naturally  into  two  well-marked  groups,  each 
emphasizing  the  qualities  peculiar  to  a  certain  type  of  essay, 
and  each  supported  by  the  evidence  to  which  it  appeals.  The 
commonest  definition  declares  the  essay  to  be  "a  short  dis- 
sertation," "a  brief  treatise,"  whether  or  not  this  statement 
be  modified  by  any  mention  of  informal  and  suggestive  treat- 
ment. This  definition  is  justified  by  the  professedly  expository 
essay,  in  high  vogue  throughout  the  nineteenth  century;  but 
it  fails  utterly  when  brought  to  the  test  of  the  familiar  essay, 
which,  through  a  long  history  of  transformations,  has  pre- 
served its  tradition  unbroken  from  the  time  of  Montaigne.  It 
is,  moreover,  to  the  essay  of  this  latter  type  that  the  literary 
critic  is  almost  infallibly  attracted.  To  him,  accordingly,  the 
mark  of  the  essay  is  not  the  orderly,  though  brief,  development 
of  its  subject,  but  informality,  suggestiveness,  and  freedom  of 
treatment.  Dr.  Johnson's  much-quoted  definition  —  "A  loose 
sally  of  the  mind;  an  irregular  indigested  piece;  not  a  regular 
and  orderly  composition"1  —  is  the  alpha  and  omega  of  his 
1  Dictionary,  second  edition. 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  5 

creed;  it  gives  him,  indeed,  a  convenient  touchstone  by  which 
the  true  essay  may  be  known  from  the  counterfeit. 

The  shortcoming  of  each  of  these  definitions  is,  however,  ap- 
parent when  tested  by  the  literature  from  which  the  other  is 
derived.  The  character  and  scope  of  the  essay  can  be  rightly 
understood,  not  by  limiting  our  field  of  vision  or  contenting  our- 
selves with  such  short  and  easy  conclusions,  but  by  recognizing 
to  the  full  all  differences  in  method  and  manner,  and  determin- 
ing the  principle  that  accounts,  not  only  for  the  "brief  treatise" 
or  the  "loose  sally  of  the  mind"  which  are  its  most  distinctive 
forms,  but  for  all  the  many  variations  of  these  two  that  merge 
into  and  connect  them. 

But  though  these  current  definitions  of  the  essay  fail  to  char- 
acterize explicitly  its  nature  and  function,  they  suggest  the 
grounds  of  a  fundamental  classification  by  their  common  insist- 
ence on  the  intellectual  activity  to  which  this  type  of  literature 
gives  expression.  The  essay,  according  to  each  definition,  bears 
the  mark  of  the  thinker;  one  emphasizes  in  it  the  free  play  of 
mind;  the  other  points  out  its  relationship  to  the  dissertation, 
which  attempts  to  present  its  subject-matter  with  formal  and 
logical  completeness.  In  treatment,  again,  it  is  defined  as  fall- 
,  ing  in  some  degree  short  of  adequacy :  it  is  brief,  not  aiming  at 
'  the  exhaustive  presentation  of  its  subject;  or  it  is  irregular,  al- 
!  lowing  either  for  whimsical  choice  or  for  partial  mastery  of  its 
subject-matter.  These  elements,  common  to  the  two  definitions 
!  though  differently  stressed  by  them,  together  make  up  the 
1  character  of  the  essay,  the  literary  medium  through  which  the 
thinker  as  such  finds  natural  and  spontaneous  expression  for 
i  the  entire  range  of  his  typical  experiences. 

The  tentativeness  of  spirit  so  characteristic  of  the  essay  is, 
as  has  been  often  pointed  out,  indicated  by  its  very  name.  For 
the  essay  in  its  first  meaning  is  nothing  else  than  the  trial,  or 
proof,  or  assay  of  its  subject;  and  Montaigne,  when  he  adopted 
a  word  then  coming  into  somewhat  general  use  as  the  title  for 
his  epoch-making  volume,  was  singularly  happy  in  giving  to  the 
new  form  of  literature  a  name  that  denoted  the  essential  ten- 


6    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

dency  of  the  critical  temper  to  try  the  value  and  assay  the 
meaning  of  the  subjects  with  which  it  dealt.  How  close  the 
early  meaning  of  the  word  lay  to  its  original,  almost  physical, 
sense  appears  interestingly  in  Montaigne's  own  statement  that 
a  certain  book  was  written  "by  way  of  Essaie."  *  Bacon,  in  a 
letter  to  Prince  Henry,  having  somewhat  the  same  thought  in 
mind,  emphasized  the  informal  rather  than  the  critical  char- 
acter of  the  essay  when  he  characterized  his  own  essays  as 
"brief  notes,  set  down  rather  significantly  than  curiously/ ' 2 
Walter  Pater,  the  most  suggestive  of  modern  critics  in  his  few 
sentences  on  this  subject,  is  thinking  of  the  essay  as  the  trial 
or  proof  of  its  subject  rather  than  the  complete  exposition  of 
it  when  he  describes  the  essayist  as  "never  judging  system- 
wise  of  things,  but  fastening  on  particulars";  or  when  he  de- 
clares that  the  essence  of  essay- writing  lies  "in  the  dexterous 
availing  oneself  of  accident  and  circumstance,  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  deeper  lines  of  observation."  3 

In  these  various  incidental  statements  the  peculiar  intel- 
lectual activity  and  the  characteristic  temper  of  the  essayist 
are  as  clearly  implied  as  in  the  narrow  definitions  of  more  sys- 
tematic critics.  The  weighing  and  testing  of  the  subject;  a  pre- 
sentation of  it  significant  rather  than  elaborate  or  "curious"; 
freedom  from  the  pedantry,  or  the  restraint,  of  theory;  the 
sense  of  the  deeper  meaning  involved  in  the  understanding  of 
the  particular  instance,  —  these  qualities  are  essentially  those 
of  the  critic,  the  disinterested  seeker  after  truth.  The  essayist 
finds  his  material  in  some  special  aspect  of  truth,  in  what  one 
might  call  the  concrete  idea,  this  idea  focusing  in  itself  what 
it  may  of  meaning,  but  lending  itself  to  no  extraneous  system. 
Pater  would  place  the  essay  midway  between  the  poem,  with 
its  intuitive  insight,  and  the  treatise  in  which  the  "scholastic 
all-sufficiency"  of  every  age  seeks  to  justify  itself.  But  the 
affiliation  of  the  essay  to  poetry  in  its  care  for  the  concrete  is 


1  "Of  Friendship,"  Essays,  ed.  1892-3,  book  I,  p.  197. 

2  Letter  to  Prince  Henry,  Letters  and  Life,  ed.  1861-9,  vol.  rv,  p.  340. 
*  "Charles  Lamb,"  Appreciations,  ed.  1889,  pp.  119-21. 


< 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  7 

but  one  of  its  aspects  ;  it  is  also,  and  preeminently,  the  means 
by  which  the  "perfected  philosophic,"  or  the  typically  critical 
temper,  can  best  express  itself.1  Its  poetic  closeness  to  reality 
thus  became  possible  only  when  thought,  having  completely 
mastered  the  material  with  which  it  was  concerned,  had  re- 
established the  connection  between  its  abstractions  and  the 
phenomenal  world.  Reason,  pausing  to  rejoice  in  its  achieve- 
ments, developed  the  new  domain  of  theory,  in  which  for  the 
moment  it  rested,  in  the  treatise  or  dissertation;  but  it  dis- 
covered the  essay  when  it  attained  to  an  intellectual  intuition, 
parallel  in  the  realm  of  thought  to  that  of  poetry  in  the  realm 
of  perception,  and  undertook  to  penetrate  into  the  nature 
of  things  rather  than  to  impose  its  own  conclusions  upon  its 
environment. 

This  conception  of  the  essay  explains  both  its  unity  of  spirit 
and  its  variety  of  form.  There  can  be  no  question  that  it  is 
primarily  concerned,  though  in  different  degrees,  with  weighing 
and  appraising  the  value  of  its  materials;  that  in  all  its  types 
reason  is  the  master- workman.  But  the  subjects  with  which  it 
deals  are  hardly  less  various  than  human  experience;  and  the 
spirit  in  which  it  treats  them  ranges  from  an  imaginative  ap- 
prehension almost  as  immediate  as  that  of  poem  or  novel  to  a 
detachment  from  the  immediate  fact  only  less  complete  than 
that  of  the  philosopher.  All  stages  of  thought  and  all  habits  of 
thinking  are  thus  reflected  in  the  essay.  Montaigne  preemi- 
nently, Dryden  and  Charles  Lamb  perhaps  most  conspicuously 
among  Englishmen,  may  be  said  to  illustrate  the  typical  essay- 
temper,  —  a  temper  in  which  the  passion  for  truth  is  removed 
as  far  as  possible  from  any  touch  of  dogmatism j  and  a  sense  of 
the  concrete  keeps  ideas  from  the  blight  of  abstractness.  But 
many  men  of  many  minds  have  made  it  their  instrument.  In 
it  a  nature-lover  like  Jefferies  records  his  illuminating  observa- 
tions; an  artist  like  Carlyle  paints  a  picture  or  disguises  a 
poem;  a  seer  like  Emerson  enunciates  his  mystical  philosophy; 
an  analyst  like  John  Stuart  Mill  elaborates  his  conceptions  of 
1  "Doctrine  of  Plato,"  Plato  and  Platonism,  ed.  1899,  pp.  156-7. 


8    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

society  and  the  individual;  a  satirist  like  Shaw  reproves  the 
vices  of  his  time.  Including  on  the  one  hand  types  of  char- 
acter closely  related  to  satire  or  drama  or  novel,  and  on  the 
other  discussions  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  those  of  the 
treatise,  it  lends  itself  to  moods  as  unlike  as  those  of  phil- 
osopher and  poet;  it  is  far  from  no  subject  that  interests  its 
age  and  is  untouched  by  no  spirit  that  moves  it. 

Yet  in  all  these  variations  it  maintains  its  distinctive  char- 
acter. The  lyric  poem,  even  in  the  most  highly  elaborated  of 
its  changing  forms,  gives  expression  to  the  simple  spontaneous 
emotion,  which,  in  the  face  of  experience,  the  poet  feels  more 
vividly  than  his  fellow  man.  The  drama,  from  Sophocles  to 
Shakespeare  and  from  Shakespeare  to  Synge,  presents  to  our 
vision,  in  some  form  or  other,  the  struggle  of  human  will  and 
passion  after  self-realization.  And  in  like  manner  the  essay, 
through  all  the  protean  shapes  in  which  we  know  it,  represents 
the  world  as  it  looks  to  the  critic,  to  the  disinterested  thinker 
who  seeks  only  to  know  and  to  body  forth  the  truth. 

It  is  inevitable  from  the  nature  of  the  essay  that  it  should 
e  among  the  latest  of  literary  forms  in  origin,  and  that  its  his- 
/  tory  should  be  throughout  associated  with  the  development  of 
the  scientific,  or  rational,  spirit.  Not  that  it  sprang  in  modern 
times  out  of  nothing.  The  impulse  that  shaped  it  may  be 
traced  to  the  furthest  limit  of  recorded  literary  history,  but 
as  a  secondary  element  in  the  more  obvious  and  absorbing  in- 
tellectual activities.  Its  beginnings  lie,  moreover,  beyond  our 
knowledge,  since  the  prose  in  which  men's  thinking  faculties 
were  first  exercised  was  doomed  to  speedy  forgetfulness.  Our 
lyric  verse  we  can  trace  back  to  the  rhythmic  utterances  of  a 
group  of  poet-men,  as  yet  conscious  of  hardly  more  than  their 
human  fellowship ;  our  stories  and  plays  to  their  reproductions 
of  the  scenes  in  which  they,  or  some  of  them,  had  borne  a  part. 
But  the  pedestrian  conversations  in  which  the  essay  had  its 
source  were  forgotten  long  before  the  poetic  refrain  ceased  to 
linger  in  men's  memory  or  the  stories  of  their  heroes  to  be  told 
and  retold  by  camp-fire  or  hearth. 


b< 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  9 

For  the  most  part,  the  spirit  that  was  later  to  find  expression 
in  it  grew  up  under  the  shelter  of  the  more  utilitarian  inter- 
ests; the  practically  minded  embodied  the  wit  and  wisdom  of 
primitive  talkers  in  proverbs,  or  the  thoughtful  turned  from 
poetry  to  elaborate  their  elementary  creeds.  After  that  remote 
and  irrecoverable  past  when  men  were  spelling  out  the  letters 
of  later  thought,  there  followed  a  long  period  in  which,  though 
the  essay  had  not  yet  come  into  being,  the  forces  that  were  to 
create  it  tried  themselves  in  various  ways.  The  literatures  of 
Greece  and  Rome  contain  many  writings  that  might  be  con-  " 
sidered  forerunners,  or  even  early  forms  of  the  essay.  Plato  may 
almost  be  called  the  first  of  the  essayists,  so  essay-like  is  the 
profound  yet  informal  treatment  of  the  subjects  discussed  in 
the  dialogues,  and  so  closely  akin  to  the  essay  is  the  dialogue  in 
spirit  and  method.  Plutarch's  Morals  and  the  Characters  of 
Theophrastus  show,  in  the  later  periods  of  Greek  literature, 
more  than  an  approximation  to  the  modern  ess.ay;  Cicero, 
whose  writings  so  deeply  influenced  both  the  thought  and  the 
style  of  the  Renaissance,  was  virtually  an  essay-writer,  and  the 
"dispersed  meditations" 1  of  Seneca's  Epistles  were  recognized 
by  Bacon  as  essays  under  another  name.  Yet  these  writings, 
to  which  the  men  of  the  Renaissance  looked  back  for  inspira- 
tion and  example,  were,  comparatively  speaking,  sporadic  and 
isolated.  Not  until  the  later  years  of  the  Renaissance  did  there 
emerge  such  a  temper  of  mind  as  would  allow  for  the  devel- 
opment of  the  essay.  In  the  storms  of  its  early  political  and 
religious  struggles,  the  individual  had  made  good  his  claim  to 
live  his  own  life  and  had  embodied  his  ideal  of  that  life  in  the 
world  of  Renaissance  art ;  but  only  when  he  had  entered  into 
his  full  heritage  of  freedom,  and  held  high  discourse  with  him- 
self on  the  meaning  of  human  experience,  could  the  essentially 
rational  spirit  find  expression  in  the  art-form  that  was  its  nat- 
ural embodiment. 

The  publication  of  the  first  two  volumes  of  Montaigne's 

1  Letter  to  Prince  Henry,  Letters  and  Life,  ed.  1861-9,  vol.  iv,  p.  340. 


V 


10    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Essays  in  1580  marks  the  beginning  of  the  English  almost  as 
truly  as  of  the  French  essay.  Michel  Eyquem  de  Montaigne, 
great  among  the  skeptical  philosophers  of  the  day,  not  only 
stamped  the  essay  with  such  a  character  that  he  may  well  be 
called  its  creator,  but  established  a  tradition  of  thought  and 
feeling  that  has  since  his  time  been  a  shaping  power  in  the  lit- 
erature of  Europe.  In  circumstances  as  by  temperament,  he 
was,  according  to  all  testimony,  singularly  fitted  to  be  the  first 
of  the  great  essayists.  His  grandfather,  a  Bordeaux  merchant  of 
rising  fortune,  had  been  able,  more  than  fifty  years  before  the 
birth  of  Michel,  to  buy  a  noble  estate,  which,  with  increasing 
prosperity,  had  given  his  family  a  dignified  and  influential  po- 
sition, and  opportunity,  at  least  in  the  case  of  the  essayist's 
father,  for  a  liberal  education  and  some  knowledge  of  the 
world.  It  is  probable  that  from  his  mother  Montaigne  inher- 
ited a  strain  of  Spanish  and  Jewish  blood,  and  that  through  her 
he  became  familiar  with  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformation, 
which  had  been  adopted  by  some  of  her  relatives. 

In  a  family  so  various  in  interest  and  so  tolerant  in  spirit  as 
this,  the  young  Montaigne  was  brought  into  close  touch  with 
all  that  was  most  vital  in  the  society  of  his  day :  with  its  clash- 
ing religious  beliefs,  its  practical  activities,  its  vivid  concern 
with  philosophy  and  art  and  scholarship.  But  the  opposing 
forces  of  the  age,  however  reconciled  in  his  home,  were  at  war 
in  France  throughout  almost  the  whole  of  his  life.  In  literature 
the  spontaneous  imaginative  impulse  of  the  Renaissance  had 
even  in  his  youth  begun  to  fail,  and  the  critical  effort  to  de- 
termine the  nature  of  classic  standards  and  to  form  in  accord- 
ance with  them  a  literature  worthy  of  the  inheritance  from 
antiquity  was  disciplining  into  new  taste  the  instinct  for  nat- 
ural and  original  expression.  In  religion  the  opposing  parties 
were,  in  his  childhood,  already  engaged  in  what  must  have 
seemed  to  many  their  final  struggle.  Calvin's  Institutes  was 
translated  into  French  in  1540,  the  year  when  Loyola  founded 
the  society  of  the  Jesuits;  and  from  the  revolt  against  the 
gabelle  in  Bordeaux,  in  1548,  to  the  accession  of  Henry  IV,  in 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  11 

1589,  the  country  was  hardly  ever  free  from  civil  war.  In  an 
age  like  this,  seething  with  partisan  argument  and  passionate 
in  its  application  of  premature  theory  to  practice,  a  disinter- 
ested point  of  view  seemed  well-nigh  impossible.  Yet  those  un- 
toward circumstances  apparently  never  turned  Montaigne  from 
his  philosophical  interest  in  truth;  they  may  even,  by  the  force 
with  which  they  pointed  their  moral,  have  accentuated  that 
critical  detachment  of  mind  and  that  humanity  of  sympathy 
which  made  him  so  original  an  interpreter  of  life. 

Natural  as  Montaigne's  position  now  seems,  the  attainment 
of  a  consistently  rational  attitude  toward  experience  was  in 
the  sixteenth  century  no  small  achievement.  The  speculative 
temper  when  it  appeared  in  the  Renaissance  was  thoroughly 
at  variance  with  the  customs  and  traditions  of  the  world  in 
which  it  found  itself;  and  in  the  clash  between  the  old  order 
and  the  new  the  advance  guard  of  thinkers  inevitably  paid  the 
penalty  of  an  almost  entire  separation  from  the  moral  and 
social  conventions  of  their  time.  The  price  at  which  these 
pioneers  in  new  realms  of  thought  bought  the  intellectual  free- 
dom which  they  bequeathed  to  Europe  was  too  often,  as 
Vernon  Lee  has  pointed  out,  the  loss  of  all  moral  standards 
and  all  sense  of  social  responsibility.1 

From  such  a  position  Montaigne  was  saved  by  his  vigorous 
sense  of  reality,  by  the  fervor  of  his  skepticism,  by  the  very 
absoluteness  with  which  he  took  reason  to  be  his  guide.  "A 
melancholy  humor  .  .  .  bred  by  the  anxietie,  and  produced 
by  the  anguish  of  carking  care"  first,  he  tells  us,  put  the  "con- 
ceipt  of  writing"  into  his  head.2  But  there  is  no  trace  of  melan- 
choly or  weariness  of  spirit  in  the  Essays;  they  are  the  very  in- 
carnation of  that  passion  for  understanding  which  separates 
the  thinker  alike  from  the  man  of  action  and  from  the  poet.  It 
was  the  integrity  with  which  he  followed  this  passion  for  un- 
derstanding that  made  him  choose  as  his  subject  —  because 

1  Euphorion,  ed.  1899,  p.  47. 

2  "Of  the  affection  of  fathers  to  their  children,"  Essays,  ed.  1892-3,  book  ii, 
p.  66. 


12    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

he  knew  it  best1  —  the  familiar  self  from  which  he  professedly 
sought  escape.  As  truly  a  repetition  of  himself  as  the  Confes- 
sions of  St.  Augustine  or  Rousseau,  or  the  Autobiography  of 
Benvenuto  Cellini,  the  Essays  are  among  the  greatest  of  those 
self -revelations  that  form  so  valuable  a  part  of  our  literary  in- 
heritance. 

But  in  their  self -revelation  there  appears  an  element  far  dif- 
ferent from  either  the  noble  sincerity  of  St.  Augustine  or  the 
towering  egoism  of  Benvenuto  Cellini;  an  element  that  later 
modifies  such  records  as  Newman's  Apologia  or  John  Stuart 
Mill's  Autobiography.  Unlike  his  predecessors  in  self -portrayal, 
Montaigne  reduced  his  experience  to  what  Mr.  Saintsbury  has 
called  the  "common  denominator  of  the  practical  reason,"  2 
and  thus  transformed  a  story  usually  colored  by  prejudice 
and  emotion  into  the  impartial  analysis  of  a  disinterested 
observer.  Nor  was  this  power  of  impersonal  self-criticism  and 
self -interpretation  due  to  any  poverty  of  nature.  The  skeptical 
spirit  that  in  a  very  real  sense  makes  him  as  a  thinker  "the 
first  of  the  moderns"  was  in  him  united  with  a  largeness  and 
an  intensity  of  vision  that  mark  him  as  belonging  to  the 
spacious  days  of  the  Renaissance.  There  were,  of  course, 
limits  in  his  experience.  He  was  content  to  leave  speculations 
on  the  unknown  for  mastery  of  the  here  and  now.  Depths  of 
spiritual  passion  he  did  not  sound.  Gleams  of  a  celestial  vision 
were  so  far  from  his  stoical  philosophy  that  even  we  of  lesser 
mould  may  sometimes  "in  our  altitudes  despise  him  a  little." 
But  if  he  did  not  profess  to  range  far,  he  frankly  accepted  the 
conditions  of  human  life,  and,  in  an  age  that  lived  much  in 
Utopia,  found  in  the  realities  of  that  life  both  happiness  and 
inspiration. 

Serene  acceptance  of  fact  and  profound  knowledge  of  him- 
self led  Montaigne  to  a  truly  modern  perception  of  the  rights  of 
other  men  to  the  fulfillment  of  their  own  natures.   "I  am  not," 

1  "  Never  man  handled  subject  he  understood  or  knew,  better  than  I  doe  this 
I  have  undertaken;  being  therein  the  eunningest  man  alive."  "Of  Repent- 
ing," Essays,  ed.  1892-3,  book  m,  p.  22. 

2  Introduction  to  Essays,  vol.  I,  p.  xxviii. 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  13 

he  tells  us,  "possessed  with  this  common  errour,  to  judge  of 
others  according  to  what  I  am  my  selfe.  I  am  easie  to  beleeve 
things  differing  from  my  selfe.  .  .  .  And  I  beleeve  and  conceive  a 
thousand  manners  of  life,  contrarie  to  the  common  sort :  I  more 
easily  admit  and  receive  difference,  than  resemblance  in  us."1 
It  was,  perhaps,  this  recognition  of  the  individuality  of  his 
fellows  and  of  the  substantial  reality  of  their  existence,  that 
enabled  him  to  see  himself  not  as  the  exception,  but  as  one  of 
the  many,  and  to  portray  himself  in  his  "owne  genuine,  simple 
and  ordinarie  fashion,  without  contention,  art  or  study."2 
This  generous  acceptance  of  diversity  in  individuals  and  of 
the  right  of  these  individuals  to  a  many-sided  development 
made  him  the  founder  of  a  new  era  in  culture,  the  era  when 
the  mystic  asceticism  of  the  Middle  Ages  yielded  to  a  free  in- 
tellectual activity  and  the  modern  world  took  on  something  of 
classic  largeness  and  vigor.  He  was  the  first  of  the  practical 
humanists,  the  spiritual  ancestor  of  thinkers  like  Goethe  and 
Matthew  Arnold,  who,  nurtured  in  classic  tradition,  have  ap- 
proached daily  experience  in  the  spirit  of  Greece  and  Rome. 
Though  his  interests  centered  far  more  than  theirs  in  the  un- 
derstanding of  what  he  could,  at  least  intellectually,  touch, 
taste,  and  handle,  he  attained  through  sheer  integrity  of 
judgment  to  a  perception  of  the  deeper  meanings  of  life  de- 
nied to  many  apparently  more  spiritually  minded  than  he. 
It  is  from  the  experiential  philosopher  that  we  have  the  rec- 
ord of  a  friendship  which,  putting  to  shame  alike  the  worldly 
wisdom  of  Bacon  and  the  mystical  egoism  of  Emerson,  can  for 
tenderness  and  intimacy  be  best  compared  with  that  com- 
memorated by  Tennyson  in  In  Memoriam.  But  the  experience 
that  gave  weight  to  Montaigne's  thought  never  clouded  his 
judgment.  Balance  and  sanity  were  in  his  eyes  the  beauty  of 
holiness.  Excess  even  of  righteousness  was  foreign  to  him ;  in 
the  age  of  St.  Bartholomew,  he  could  avow  that  though  he 
might  follow  truth  to  the  fire,  he  could  scarcely  burn  for  it. 

1  "Of  Cato  the  Younger,"  Essays,  ed.  1892-3,  book  I,  pp.  245-6. 

2  "The  Author  to  the  Reader,"  ibid.,  p.  12. 


14    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

The  first  of  the  essayists  was  the  preacher  of  moderation  as 
truly  as  he  was  the  seeker  after  truth  or  the  lover  of  the 
fact. 

Montaigne's  Essays,  so  modern  in  their  realism  and  inti- 
macy, and  so  truly  a  revelation  of  that  for  which  the  age  was 
half-consciously  groping,  became  an  immediate  influence  in 
European  thought.  Englishmen  responded  quickly  to  their 
charm.  Shakespeare  and  Bacon,  to  mention  only  the  greatest 
names,  paid  them  the  tribute  of  quotation  or  adaptation;  and 
Florio's  translation  made  them  after  1603  almost  as  much  a 
possession  of  England  as  of  France.  But  in  spite  of  Montaigne's 
general  influence,  the  essay  took  in  its  beginning  in  England 
a  very  different  character  from  that  which  he  had  impressed 
upon  it.  In  the  last  decade  of  the  sixteenth  century,  while 
Spenser  was  still  writing  The  Faerie  Queen  and  Shakespeare 
presenting  his  great  comedies,  there  was  everywhere  evident  a 
new  and  prophetic  curiosity  as  to  the  actual  facts  of  life  and 
the  laws  which  ruled  human  action,  —  a  curiosity  through 
which  men  were  passing  from  the  imaginative  enthusiasm  of 
the  Renaissance  to  the  scientific  enthusiasm  of  the  following 
centuries. 

One  manifestation  of  this  incipient  interest  in  the  everyday 
world  is  of  especial  significance  to  the  student  of  the  essay: 
writers  who  were  falling  under  the  spell  of  the  new  passion  for 
knowledge  turned  from  the  sonnet-writing  that  had  amused 
them  a  few  years  earlier  to  the  keeping  of  notebooks,  in  which, 
sometimes  for  their  own  pleasure  and  sometimes  for  discussion 
with  their  friends,  they  epitomized  their  reading  and  wrote 
down  their  reflections.  It  was  this  habit  of  keeping  and  com- 
paring notebooks,  rather  than  Montaigne's  discursive  treat- 
ment of  life,  that  gave  to  the  first  English  essays  their  pecu- 
liar character.  An  anonymous  writer  in  1596  shows  us  how 
easy  was  the  transformation  of  one  into  the  other  when  he  ex- 
plains that,  as  he  has  framed  his  essays  only  for  his  own  use, 
he  has  taken  "no  great  paine,  to  set  them  foorth  anye  bet- 
ter," and  adds  that  much  of  his  material  was  taken  from  the 

""  i  iln  >  ■■ii)ij„,.ITM,_  ^^m 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  15 

writings  of  the  past,  from  the  "faire  flowers"  of  which  he  has 
"gathered  this  small  heape,"  and,  as  time  and  leisure  served, 
"distilled  them  and  kept  them  as  precious."  1  This  fashion 
was  closely  followed  by  Bacon  when  in  1597  he  published  a 
thin  volume  of  ten  essays,  which  were,  in  fact,  little  more  than 
scattered  notes  or  abstracts,  the  epitome  of  his  reading  and 
reflection  on  subjects  of  especial  interest  to  a  young  man 
deeply  concerned  in  public  affairs.  His  comparatively  slight 
esteem  for  his  essays  is  very  evident.  He  declared  in  the 
dedication  to  the  first  edition  that  he  published  them  only 
because  they  were  already  going  to  print;2  and  in  1625,  when 
they  were  at  last  completed,  and  he  had  come  to  regard 
them  as  among  "the  best  fruits  of  his  labor,"  he  rested  his 
hope  of  their  lasting  "as  long  as  books  last"  on  "the  Latin 
volume  of  them."3 

These  "brief  notes"  of  his  observation  and  thought,  set 
down  in  this  wise,  because  "just  treatises"  require  "leisure  in 
the  writer,  and  leisure  in  the  reader,"4  bore  small  resemblance 
to  Montaigne's  rambling  and  intimate  essays.  But  the  form 
chosen  by  Bacon  was  peculiarly  suited  to  his  purpose.  To  him 
the  essay  was  but  an  occasional  means  for  the  expression  of 
those  obiter  dicta  that  were  perhaps  the  weightier  because  the 
author  was  intent  on  larger  ends.  For  this  purpose  nothing 
could  have  been  found  better  than  the  notebook  essay  of  the 
day,  which  he  pressed  into  his  service,  and  which,  by  its  con- 
densation, brevity,  and  point,  brought  his  ideas  home  to  the 
business  and  bosoms  of  men. 

Nor  did  the  history  of  the  Baconian  essay  end  with  Bacon. 
A  number  of  his  contemporaries,  more  or  less  inspired,  con- 
tinued to  make  use  of  it.  Ben  Jonson's  Timber,  at  once  a  vol- 
ume of  essays  in  embryo  and  an  abstract  of  the  great  scholar's 
blended  reading  and  reflection,  shows  it  in  the  very  process  of 

1  Harold  V.  Routh,  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  ed.  1907-, 
vol.  iv,  392-3. 

2  Works,  ed.  1857-9,  vol.  vi,  p.  523. 

3  Ibid.,  vol.  vi,  p.  373. 

4  Letter  to  Prince  Henry,  Letters  and  Life,  ed.  1861-9,  vol.  rv,  p.  340. 


16    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

coming  into  being.  Almost  in  our  own  day,  Emerson  expressed 
in  it  his  mystical  vision  and  poetic  insight.  Such  diversities  as 
these  in  temperament  and  point  of  view  indicate  the  compass 
of  even  the  narrower  form  of  the  essay  shaped  by  Bacon  out  of 
what  seemed  a  passing  fashion.  Less  flexible  and  less  intimate 
than  the  Montaigne  essay,  this  later  type  was  confined  to  a 
more  specific  use,  but  in  its  own  sphere  it  boasts  a  literature 
unequaled  in  weight  and  vigor  of  matter. 

Few  in  number  as  are  Bacon's  essays,  they,  of  all  his  works, 
give  the  truest  idea  of  his  intellectual  character.  For  while  in 
the  Advancement  of  Learning  or  the  New  Atlantis  he  embodied 
his  dream  of  a  world  worthy  of  the  Renaissance  hope  for  hu- 
manity, he  was  in  these  occasional  observations  revealing  that 
wonderful  union  of  practical  shrewdness  and  lofty  wisdom 
which  is  the  keynote  of  his  character.  The  son  of  Sir  Nicholas 
Bacon,  the  Lord  Keeper  of  the  Great  Seal,  and  from  his  birth 
connected  with  the  life  of  the  court,  he  was  thoroughly  at  home 
in  the  society  of  his  day  even  while  he  was  shaping  the  world 
of  the  future.  The  contradictions  so  conspicuous  in  his  char- 
acter as  statesman  and  as  philosopher  were  as  apparent  in  his 
habit  of  thought.  The  most  patient  of  thinkers,  he  had  in  his 
enthusiasm  for  knowledge  a  freshness  and  an  ardor  that  are 
ordinarily  the  birthright  of  the  poet;  in  dealing  with  men  and 
events,  where  passion  usually  burns  at  the  fiercest,  he  was 
marked  by  the  coolness  and  detachment  supposed  to  be  char- 
acteristic of  the  philosopher. 

In  the  essays,  these  qualities,  paradoxical  as  they  appear, 
are  united  in  the  poetic  apprehension  of  the  practical  concerns 
of  life  and  the  large  judgment  of  their  value  and  meaning.  The 
subjects  sound  as  a  rule  trite  enough,  being  in  the  main  lim- 
ited to  such  generally  familiar  topics  as  Friendship,  or  Youth 
and  Age;  and  to  those,  like  Great  Place,  or  Ceremonies  and 
Respects,  of  particular  concern  to  men  interested  in  public 
affairs.  The  readers  whom  Bacon  addressed -found  stimulus 
not  in  new  or  far-fetched  themes,  in  subtle  distinctions  or 
delicate  shadings  of   thought,  but  in  the  variations  played 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  17 

upon  those  general  truths,  commonplace  perhaps  but  none 
the  less  profoundly  human,  which  occupied  so  large  a  place 
in  their  philosophy  of  life.  In  the  treatment  of  these  large 
subjects  Bacon  stands  alone.  To  him  thought  and  fact,  no 
less  than  idea  and  image,  are  one;  the  very  prejudices  that 
he  would  destroy  appear  before  him  visually  as  the  idols  that 
men  ignorantly  worship,  the  idols  of  forum  and  cave  and 
market-place  and  theater.  It  is  to  their  combination  of  sound 
sense  and  imaginative  perception  that  the  peculiar  weight  and 
richness  of  the  essays  is  due,  the  imagery  that  ordinarily  yields 
only  poetic  suggestion  being  in  them  pressed  into  the  service 
of  exact  and  practical  thought.  With  Bacon  thought  and 
image  alike  center  in  the  practical;  or,  rather,  the  practical  is 
itself  both  thought  and  poetry. 

This  sense  of  the  more  tangible  realities  with  which  he  was 
chiefly  concerned  appears  in  his  treatment  of  all  subjects;  he 
would  seem  to  value  friendship,  for  example,  rather  for  its 
power  to  enrich  and  ennoble  one's  life  than  from  any  purely 
ideal  or  sentimental  consideration.  It  accounts,  too,  in  great 
part  for  his  immediate  popularity:  his  first  readers,  men 
trained  in  the  duties  of  a  complete  courtier  and  keenly  inter- 
ested in  affairs  of  state,  were  ready  to  appreciate  to  the  full 
the  "civil  and  moral  counsels"  that  were  the  outcome  of  so 
wide  and  accurate  a  knowledge  of  life.  The  practical  qual- 
ity of  Bacon's  essays,  closely  related  as  it  was  to  the  politi- 
cal activities  and  general  taste  of  his  time,  was,  moreover, 
saved  from  narrowness  hardly  less  by  its  essential  poetry 
than  by  its  connection  with  his  philosophy.  The  spiritual 
was,  in  the  eyes  of  this  enthusiast  for  nature  and  natural 
law,  inextricably  bound  up  with  the  material;  and  the  most 
insignificant  of  life's  toils  and  the  most  tortuous  of  its  pro- 
cesses were  thus  of  supreme  interest  to  him.  His  firm  in- 
sistence on  fact  was  enlarged  by  his  passionate  care  for 
truth,  and  his  belief  that  through  its  attainment  the  life  and 
estate  of  men  might  be  infinitely  improved.  His  one  direct 
quotation  from  Montaigne  is  the  saying  that  a  liar  "is  brave 


18    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

towards  God  and  a  coward  towards  men." l  It  was,  indeed,  in 
their  common  love  for  truth  that  he  was  most  closely  allied 
with  his  great  predecessor.  Yet  though  in  this  he  was  like 
Montaigne,  he  was  like  him  with  a  difference.  Montaigne  was 
essentially  the  observer  and  the  skeptic :  his  chosen  home  was 
the  room  in  the  tower  that  has  become  the  very  symbol  of  de- 
tachment; he  took  the  balance  for  bis  emblem  and  his  motto 
was  Que  sgais-je  ?  Bacon's  intellectual  temperament  was,  on 
the  other  hand,  akin  in  its  intensity  to  that  of  prophet  and 
poet;  his  enthusiasm  for  truth,  his  passion  for  the  good  of  man- 
kind, had,  notwithstanding  their  differences  in  aim,  much  in 
common  with  the  religious  fervor  of  the  mystic.  It  is  this 
ardor  of  mind  which  gives  the  essays  their  peculiar  charac- 
ter, reminding  us  of  the  "naked  and  open  day-light,"  which, 
though  it  "doth  not  shew  the  masks  and  mummeries  and 
triumphs  of  the  world,  half  so  stately  and  daintily  as  candle- 
lights," inspires  in  us  something  of  the  essayist's  joy  in  the 
inquiry  and  the  knowledge  and  the  belief  of  truth,  which  is  in 
his  eyes  "the  sovereign  good  of  human  nature."  2 

Unmatched  as  Bacon's  essays  were  in  fullness  of  content  and 
perfection  of  expression,  their  direct  influence  on  the  later  his- 
tory of  the  essay  was  surprisingly  small.  The  essayists  of  his 
own  time  recognized  him,  it  is  true,  as  their  pattern  and  leader; 
but,  perhaps  because  of  the  type  of  the  essay  used  by  him,  tie- 
was  to  his  successors  of  the  next  two  generations  a  moulder  of 
thought  rather  than  a  model  of  literary  form.  There  was,  in- 
deed, in  the  early  seventeenth  century  no  such  widespread 
freedom  of  spirit,  no  such  intellectual  curiosity,  as  would  make 
the  general  use  of  the  essay  possible.  Nor  was  this  freedom  of 
spirit  and  intellectual  curiosity  possible  of  attainment  until  the 
revolution  of  which  Bacon  was  the  great  harbinger  had  been 
effected.    The  predominating  enthusiasm  of  the  Renaissance 

1  "Of  Truth,"  Works,  ed.  1857,  vol.  vi,  p.  379.  Cf.  "For,  what  can  be  im- 
agined so  vile,  and  base,  as  to  be  a  coward  towards  men,  and  a  boaster  towards 
God?"   "Of  giving  the  lie,"  Essays,  ed.  1892-3,  book  n,  p.  402. 

2  "Of  Truth,"  Works,  ed.  1857,  vol.  vi,  pp.  377-8. 


THE  ENGLISH   ESSAY  19 

had  been  called  out  by  the  desire  for  self-expression  and  the 
love  of  beauty;  it  had  led  to  the  vindication  of  men's  right  to 
live  their  lives  unhindered  and  to  the  representation  in  art 
of  this  freer  and  more  individual  life.  The  rational  temper 
which  was  later  to  create  the  essay,  though  it  had  been  a  strong 
element  in  this  earlier  period  of  personal  and  artistic  self-ex- 
pression, had,  at  least  in  its  more  explicit  forms,  appeared 
chiefly  in  the  fields  of  religious  and  critical  controversy.  An 
enthusiasm  for  right  reason,  an  absorbing  sense  of  the  great- 
ness of  knowledge,  had  to  become  the  ruling  powers  even  in 
practical  life  before  a  predominantly  intellectual  experience 
could  become  the  subject-matter  of  literature. 

In  the  development  of  this  intellectual  temper,  the  tem- 
per that  we  recognize  as  essentially  modern,  Bacon  held  the 
first  place,  —  but  Bacon  the  philosopher  rather  than  Bacon 
the  essayist.  His  formulation  of  the  new  philosophy  —  the 
philosophy  already  implicit  in  the  theology  of  Hooker  and  in 
the  criticism  of  Ben  Jonson  as  well  as  in  the  scientific  meth- 
ods of  the  age  —  was  perhaps  the  chief  force  that,  by  giving  it 
knowledge  of  itself,  stimulated  the  development  of  the  spirit 
that  was  to  rule  the  following  centuries.  The  greatest  think- 
ers, says  John  Morley,  must  have  "the  presentiment  of  the 
eve,"  must  recognize  under  the  evident  forces  of  their  time  the 
working  of  those  hidden  agencies  that  are  to  shape  the  future.1 
In  the  recognition  of  these  germinal  forces  lies  Bacon's  chief 
claim  to  greatness.  He  not  only  felt  their  working  dimly,  but 
came  to  understand  their  nature  with  something  of  a  proph- 
et's prescience  and  to  proclaim  them  with  something  of  a 
prophet's  fervor;  and  his  service  as  a  man  of  letters  was  thus 
completed  and  surpassed  by  his  influence  on  those  habits  of 
thought  and  life  whence  all  art  springs. 

While  Bacon  and  his  less  famous  contemporaries  were  fash- 
ioning the  English  essay,  there  grew  up  beside  it  an  allied  form 
of  literature  destined  greatly  to  affect  its  later  development. 

1  "Thomas  Babington  Macaulay,"  Critical  Miscellanies,  ed.  1893-1908, 
vol.  i,  p.  291. 


20    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

The  "character,"  as  distinct  from  the  portrait,  deals  with 
types  or  classes,  and  so  necessarily  presupposes  a  somewhat 
analytic  attitude  toward  the  actual  life  and  conditions  of 
the  people  it  describes.  The  tendency  to  portray  such  type- 
characteristics  had  in  earlier  days  closely  followed  the  trend 
of  social  and  ethical  interest,  appearing  conspicuously  in  the 
allegorical  descriptions  of  The  Vision  of  Piers  Ploughman,  in 
the  satires  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and,  more  fully  developed, 
in  the  many  studies  of  rogues  and  vagabonds.  But  these  earlier 
character-sketches  were  always  incidents  in  a  larger  work;  the 
character  as  a  separate  form  of  literature  was  almost  un- 
known until  about  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
when  a  new  interest  in  daily  life  followed  hard  on  the  growing 
wealth  and  luxury  and  the  growing  religious  and  political  earn- 
estness of  England.  It  thus  came  into  existence  as  a  result  of 
the  same  critical  and  practical  temper  that  had  been  so  effica- 
cious in  the  creation  of  the  essay,  though  it  stressed  the  con- 
crete elements  of  an  experience  which  the  essay  undertook  to 
interpret  rationally. 

To  writers  awakening  to  the  artistic  and  ethical  possibilities 
of  the  new  world  of  everyday  reality  the  Characters  of  Theo- 
phrastus,  the  pupil  and  successor  of  Aristotle,  furnished  stimu- 
lus and  example.  First  translated  into  Latin  by  Casaubon  in 
1592,  these  Characters,  giving  realistic  pictures  of  life  in  Athens 
in  the  time  of  Alexander,  became  one  of  the  most  potent  among 
the  classic  influences  of  the  following  years.  Forthwith  the 
English  character,  largely  influenced  by  this  lately  accessible 
classic  model  but  the  outgrowth  of  a  slowly  growing  concern 
with  real  life,  took  its  place  as  one  of  the  more  popular  of 
the  minor  literary  forms;  among  readers  marked  by  strong 
but  elementary  social  interests  it  apparently  surpassed  in 
immediate  effectiveness  both  the  essay  and  the  satire. 

For  this  rapid  development  of  the  character  there  were  many 
reasons,  the  most  evident  being  the  ease  with  which  it  lent  it- 
self to  practical  purposes.  The  satirist  found  in  it  a  weapon  only 
less  keen  than  the  "  portraits  "  of  Dryden  or  Pope;  the  moral- 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  21 

ist,  a  picture  hardly  less  potent  to  teach  than  the  long-familiar 
fable  or  parable.  It  was,  moreover,  singularly  fitted,  not  only 
to  serve  these  ethical  and  social  ends,  but  to  give  expression  to 
the  habit  of  mind  most  characteristic  of  the  early  seventeenth 
century.  For  the  character  is  a  sort  of  half-way  house  between 
the  purely  imaginative  portrayal  of  an  object  and  the  critical 
exposition  of  its  meaning;  and  so  it  lent  itself  with  peculiar  fe- 
licity to  the  needs  of  a  generation  that  was  turning  from  the 
artistic  world  of  the  Renaissance  to  the  rational  world  of  later 
centuries.  It  is  true  that  this  change  to  a  more  critical  point 
of  view  appears  everywhere;  —  it  is  no  more  evident  in  the 
character  than  in  Donne's  descriptions  and  Waller's  couplets, 
in  Jonson's  plays  and  Hobbes's  translations.  But,  by  what 
might  be  called  its  attempt  after  definition  in  the  concrete,  the 
character  offered  an  obvious  opportunity  for  the  growing 
rational  spirit  to  try  itself,  and  marked  an  important  stage  in 
the  developing  naturalism  of  the  seventeenth  century. 

Its  connection  with  the  essay  is  even  closer  than  that  which 
has  so  often  been  pointed  out  with  the  realistic  novel.  Though 
they  bore  different  names  and  reflected  slightly  different  phases 
of  contemporary  interest,  the  relationship  between  them 
through  the  first  half  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  so  inti- 
mate that  they  were  not  only  constantly  published  together, 
but  were  at  times  almost  indistinguishable  in  subject-matter 
and  method.  A  volume  of  Donne's,  for  example,  published 
as  late  as  1652,  and  entitled  Paradoxes,  Problemes,  Essayes, 
Characters,  contains  only  one  essay  proper;  but  the  problems 
and  paradoxes,  discussing  with  the  fantastic  ingenuity  of  a 
decadent  school  such  topics  as  women's  love  of  feathers  and 
the  beauty  of  painted  faces,  are  essays  under  a  different  name, 
while  the  characters  are  essays  of  the  type  we  still  know  in 
Lamb's  Poor  Relations  and  Hunt's  The  Old  Gentleman.  It  was 
inevitable  not  only  that  forms  of  literature  so  similar  in  na- 
ture and  social  function  should  powerfully  influence  each  other 
throughout  their  whole  history,  but  that  the  more  fundamental 
and  flexible  of  them  should  dominate  the  type  finally  devel- 


22    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

oped  through  their  interaction.  Accordingly,  after  its  brief  pe- 
riod of  independent  greatness  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
character  came  to  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  the  essay.  In  this 
relation  it  has  constantly  tended  to  strengthen  the  concrete 
elements  that  have  marked  the  essay  from  its  beginning,  while 
it  has  in  turn  gained  infinitely  in  flexibility  of  treatment,  and 
in  scope  and  refinement  of  subject-matter.  Its  later  history  is 
singularly  interesting  and  varied.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  it  enriched  the  periodical  essay  and  had, 
especially  through  the  Sir  Roger  De  Coverley  papers,  no  small 
share  in  the  development  of  the  novel.  It  later  created  a  whole 
gallery  of  character-portraits,  of  which  those  of  Dick  Minim 
and  Beau  Tibbs  are  perhaps  the  most  famous.  In  the  last  hun- 
dred years,  besides  giving  us  innumerable  studies  of  persons 
and  places  in  their  more  typical  aspects,  it  has  lent  itself  to 
such  social  satire  as  Thackeray's  Book  of  Snobs  and  such  ex- 
quisite criticism  as  Pater's  Imaginary  Portraits. 

For  more  than  a  generation  after  Bacon's  death  there  was 
an  apparent  pause  in  the  history  of  the  essay.  Though  it 
had  grown  up  in  response  to  the  very  real  needs  of  its  time, 
and  though  it  had  at  once  achieved  greatness,  every  con- 
dition for  its  further  development  was  wanting  in  the  years 
immediately  following  its  creation.  The  intellectual  curiosity 
and  the  dispassionate  spirit  which  were  the  very  conditions  of 
its  existence  were  manifestly  impossible  when  England's  po- 
litical and  religious  fate  was  trembling  in  the  balance,  and  when 
party  and  principle  were  identified  in  the  struggle  for  national 
independence. 

And  if  the  essayist  had  small  leisure  for  the  disinterested 
search  after  truth  on  which  his  work  rests,  he  was  even  less 
able  to  find  an  audience  that  cared  for  what  he  might  have  to 
say.  The  comparatively  narrow  literary  circle  for  which  his 
predecessors  had  written  had  vanished  in  the  years  of  national 
storm,  while  the  larger  reading  public  to  which  his  successors 
could  appeal  was  as  yet  unformed  or  barely  coming  to  con- 
sciousness of  itself  and  its  desires.   The  language  in  which  he 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  23 

could  express  himself  was,  moreover,  if  not  wholly  lacking, 
still  difficult  and  unformed;  the  prosaic  as  distinct  from  the 
poetic  temper  had  before  it  a  task  of  genuine  creation,  and  un- 
til that  task  was  finished  had  no  fit  vehicle  of  expression.  The 
essentially  poetic  prose  of  the  Elizabethans  was  at  an  almost 
world-wide  distance  from  the  age  of  Hampden  and  Pym;  men 
of  learning,  in  spite  of  the  example  of  Hooker  and  Hobbes,  were 
still  writing  in  Latin,  and  ordinary  prose  was  hopelessly  over- 
weighted with  awkward  and  uncouth  Latinisms.  General 
taste  was,  moreover,  vitiated  by  the  liking  for  elaborate  fancies 
and  fantastic  ornaments  which  was  inherited  from  the  early 
Ciceronians  and  Euphuists,  while  it  had  found  as  yet  no  stand- 
ard of  expression  by  which  to  test  and  clarify  its  thinking 
processes. 

In  such  conditions  the  need  of  a  simple,  direct  medium  of 
communication  could  be  perceived  only  by  the  artist  capable 
of  creating  it.  But  the  burning  questions  of  religion  and  poli- 
tics attracted  the  best  minds  to  practical  realms,  or  drove  them 
to  a  dogmatic  partisanship  equally  remote  from  the  disinter- 
ested creative  attitude.  Milton,  drawn  perforce  into  politics, 
wrote  pamphlets  matchless  in  eloquence  as  in  abuse;  Sir 
Thomas  Browne,  a  mystic  alien  to  his  turbulent  age,  embodied 
his  musing  meditations  in  prose  that  is  almost  poetry;  but  the 
few  essayists  proper  either  echoed  Bacon  in  their  commonplace 
moralizings  or  turned  to  tedious,  because  unskilled,  discussions 
of  political  and  theological  questions.  Yet  though  their  work 
was  for  the  most  part  mediocre,  it  did  something  to  shape  the 
essay  to  the  minds  of  its  readers.  The  religious  essays  of  those 
years  in  particular,  though  dull  and  often  polemical  in  tone, 
were  among  the  sturdiest  pioneers  in  the  field  of  the  special 
essay,  which  from  the  time  of  Dryden  became  so  important 
an  agent  in  the  moulding  of  English  thought. 

But  though  the  development  of  the  essay  seemed  for  the  time 
to  be  suspended,  the  social  forces  at  work  in  this  transitional 
period  were  determining  the  conditions  of  its  later  history. 
The  interest  and  effectiveness  of  the  essay  as  such  depends  on 


24    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  prevalence  among  readers  of  a  critical  and  reflective  habit 
of  mind.  The  rational  spirit,  which,  however  conspicuous  in 
its  leading  thinkers,  had  been  a  secondary  factor  in  the  daily- 
life  of  the  earlier  Renaissance,  was  greatly  strengthened  as  well 
as  far  more  widely  diffused  during  the  years  when  the  English 
Commons  were  struggling  for  political  and  religious  freedom. 
In  those  days  of  trial  we  see  the  national  temper  transforming 
itself  from  the  imaginative  enthusiasm  of  the  Elizabethan  age 
to  the  passion  for  reason  that  marked  the  England  of  the 
Revolution.  The  spirit  evoked  was,  of  course,  oftenest  narrow 
and  dogmatic:  in  struggle  over  the  king's  prerogative,  the 
rights  of  the  bishops,  the  power  of  the  people,  in  endless  dis- 
cussion about  ship-money,  monopolies,  and  religious  cere- 
monies, it  took  a  turn  repellently  argumentative  and  partisan. 
Yet  adverse  as  were  these  conditions  to  the  immediate  future 
of  the  essay,  they  were  potent  to  create  the  new  England  of 
which  it  was  to  be  a  chief  means  of  expression.  The  energy 
called  forth  in  discussing  the  momentous  questions  of  that  great 
age  revolutionized  the  intellectual  life  of  England.  Though 
for  a  time  interest  in  knowledge  seemed  to  fail  in  the  stress  of 
practical  activity,  and  humane  habits  of  thought  to  be  further 
than  ever  from  attainment,  yet  the  strengthening  of  the  na- 
tion's critical  power,  whatever  the  apparent  loss,  was  the  one 
means  by  which  it  could  advance  to  a  more  universal  and  lib- 
eral culture.  Interest  in  the  larger  national  issues  not  only  be- 
came general  in  the  middle  class,  as  yet  little  touched  by  them, 
but  tended  to  develop  in  that  much  wider  circle  the  care  for 
truth,  the  confidence  in  individual  judgment  and  the  habit  of 
relatively  clear  thinking  which  had  hitherto  been  largely  con- 
fined to  scholars  and  gentlemen. 

From  the  time  of  the  Restoration  this  change  in  national 
spirit  became  increasingly  evident.  With  the  establishment  of 
a  settled  government  and  some  measure  of  civil  and  religious 
freedom,  modern  England,  which  had  shaped  itself  in  hardly 
more  than  a  generation  of  conflict,  appeared  in  its  essential 
lineaments.     Most  conspicuous  among  the  many  signs    of 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  25 

change  —  and  the  best  measure  of  the  distance  traveled  by 
the  national  mind  since  the  days  of  Elizabeth  —  was  the  un- 
precedented development  of  the  scientific,  or  critical,  spirit. 
The  leading  men  of  the  age  were  suddenly  possessed  by  it.  The 
predominating  tone  of  thought  became  inquisitive  and  skep- 
tical. The  authority  of  tradition  was  attacked,  the  facts  of 
nature  were  everywhere  appealed  to.  The  sciences  became  sub- 
jects of  engrossing  interest.  Charles  the  Second  and  his  court- 
iers found  time  to  devote  to  serious  scientific  study,  the  king 
even  fitting  up  a  chemical  laboratory  for  his  own  use.  The  Royal 
Society,  the  successor  of  a  little  group  of  "diverse  worthy  per- 
sons" who  first  met  in  Oxford  in  1645  to  inquire  "into  natural 
philosophy  and  other  parts  of  human  learning,"  obtained  its 
charter  in  1662  and  at  once  became  an  important  factor  in  the 
thinking  of  the  day.  Dryden  and  Cowley  were  among  its  first 
members;  and  Dryden's  statement  that  the  Essay  of  Dramatic 
Poesie  "was  sceptical  according  to  that  way  of  reasoning 
which  was  used  by  Socrates,  Plato,  and  all  the  academics  of 
old,  .  .  .  and  which  is  imitated  by  the  modest  inquisitions  of  the 
Royal  Society,"  l  was  but  one  of  the  many  indications  of  the 
wide  diffusion  of  a  more  or  less  scientific  point  of  view.  Think- 
ers in  all  fields  were,  indeed,  intent  on  the  same  ends :  philoso- 
phers and  theologians,  critics  of  society  and  critics  of  litera- 
ture, were  alike  endeavoring  to  determine  the  elementary  laws 
that  might  bring  order  into  the  chaos  of  their  as  yet  largely 
unanalyzed  experience.  A  hardly  less  important  factor  in  the 
development  of  the  essay  than  this  general  trend  toward  a  more 
critical  view  of  life  was  the  existence  of  a  large  class  of  poten- 
tial readers,  already  somewhat  practiced  in  political  and  re- 
ligious discussion,  and  aware  of  the  value  of  the  printed  page  in 
matters  that  concerned  them.  For  the  moment  the  audience 
of  the  new  writers  was,  it  is  true,  small  enough,  consisting  of 
hardly  more  than  the  court  circle  and  those  citizens  who  cared 
to  imitate  its  literary  fashions  as  well  as  its  social  follies.   But 

1  "Defence  of  an  Essay  of  Dramatic  Poesie,"  Essays  of  John  Dryden,  ed. 
1900,  vol.  i,  p.  124-. 


26    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  many  who  had  eagerly  read  pamphlets  and  news-sheets 
during  the  years  of  parliamentary  struggle,  though  in  the  first 
lassitude  of  reaction  content  with  sermon  or  tract  or  romance, 
were  sure,  in  progress  of  time,  to  claim  their  share  in  the  literary 
and  social  as  well  as  in  the  political  interests  of  their  day. 

An  early  sign  of  the  change  in  national  temper  that  had  gone 
on  unheeded  in  the  age  of  political  struggle  was  the  creation  — 
or  re-creation  —  soon  after  the  Restoration  of  the  critical  or 
technical  essay.  This  essay,  dealing  with  special  questions  and 
primarily  concerned  with  matters  of  knowledge,  was  peculiarly 
adapted  to  satisfy  the  awakening  curiosity  of  the  new  reading 
public;  and,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  for  a  few  years  it  supplanted 
in  interest  and  importance  the  personal  or  reflective  essay  that 
had  taken  shape  in  the  Renaissance. 

Intimately,  however,  as  the  growth  of  this  essay-form  was 
connected  with  the  transformation  of  public  taste,  its  immedi- 
ate greatness  was  due  almost  wholly  to  the  work  of  JohnJDry- 
den.  Dryden,  it  is  true,  created  no  new  thing.  The  essay  treat- 
ing of  special  subjects,  most  frequently  of  morals  or  theology, 
had  been  making  many  experiments,  usually  untoward,  in  the 
last  few  decades;  the  essay-preface,  introduced  long  before  by 
Caxton,  was  not  only  coming  into  somewhat  general  use,  but 
had  of  late  received  contributions  from  a  critic  as  distinguished 
as  the  great  Hobbes  himself;  the  dramatic  criticism  of  Cor- 
neille  and  his  fellow  Workers  in  France  was  rich  in  suggestion 
not  only  as  to  aesthetic  theory  but  as  to  the  essay-treatment  of 
its  subject-matter.  Yet,  considerable  as  were  the  achievements 
of  his  predecessors  and  contemporaries,  Dryden  may  fairly 
be  accounted  the  founder  of  the  critical  essay,  since  he  first 
truly  popularized  the  discussion  of  technical  questions,  and  so 
made  the  knowledge  of  the  specialist  comparable  in  interest 
and  importance  with  the  more  evident  humanity  of  the  earlier 
essayists. 

The  purely  literary  questions  Dryden  treats  were,  of  neces- 
sity, living  issues  to  the  critics  of  his  day,  when  old  forms  had 
passed  away  and  new  ones  were  still  to  be  discovered.  His  in- 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  27 

terest  in  them  was,  moreover,  especially  vital,  for  as  poet  and 
dramatist  he  was  forced  to  a  full  understanding  of  the  perplexi- 
ties and  of  the  practical  significance  of  the  critical  problems 
with  which  he  dealt.  His  essays  were  almost  always  prefaces, 
written  in  connection  with  some  experiment  of  his  own,  and 
often  defending  or  explaining  an  opinion  recently  adopted  or  in 
process  of  making.  His  history  as  a  critic  is  thus  the  history  of  a 
search  after  the  truth  concerning  literary  methods  and  literary 
values,  as  now  one  and  now  another  problem  pressed  itself  upon 
his  attention.  And  he  is  perhaps  the  best  spokesman  of  an  age 
whose  interest  in  theory  was  essentially  experimental  and 
practical,  because  he  remained  throughout  his  life  singularly 
free  from  critical  dogmatism,  frankly  changing  his  ground  as 
he  reached  a  new  point  of  view,  or,  if  he  had  not  yet  reached 
it,  laying  before  his  readers  the  balanced  evidence  from  which 
they  must  draw  their  own  conclusions. 

Dryden  was  the  first  among  the  great  critics  to.  approach 
literature  as  Montaigne  and  Bacon  had  approached  life. 
He  had  learned  from  "honest  Montaigne,"  he  tells  us  in  the 
Preface  to  the  Fables,  that  "the  nature  of  a  preface  is  rambling, 
never  wholly  out  of  the  way,  nor  in  it."  l  But  his  likeness 
to  the  first  of  the  essayists  is  far  deeper  than  any  such  super- 
ficial similarity  of  method.  With  strong  personal  interest  in 
the  questions  he  discusses,  he  unites  the  freedom  and  candor 
of  the  disinterested  truth-lover;  with  the  intellectual  flexibility 
of  the  born  skeptic,  the  realist's  sense  of  fact :  and  thus  his  es- 
says, though  they  deal  with  what  is  in  the  strictest  sense  the 
technical  subject-matter  of  literary  criticism,  have  more  than 
a  touch  of  the  imaginative  vigor  of  Bacon  and  the  generous 
humanity  of  Montaigne. 

But  Dryden  was  of  the  school  of  Shakespeare  as  well  as  of  the 
school  of  Bacon  and  Montaigne.  Like  his  forerunner  Corneille, 
he  was  a  great  critic  no  less  because  he  was  a  great  poet  than 
because  he  was  a  great  thinker.  It  was,  indeed,  of  no  small  sig- 
nificance for  its  later  history  that  the  writer  who  in  its  begin- 
1  Essays  of  John  Dryden,  ed.  1900,  vol.  n,  p.  255. 


28    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

ning  stamped  upon  the  technical  essay  something  of  his  own 
intellectual  character  was  endowed  with  the  poet's  reach  of 
vision  and  fullness  of  perception.  It  is  easy  to  gather  from 
Dryden's  writings,  influenced  as  they  frequently  were  by  cur- 
rent opinion,  judgments  that  are  the  derision  of  later  criti- 
cism. But  his  fair-minded  effort  to  see  the  object  at  which  he 
was  looking  stamped  his  essays  with  nobility  and  breadth, 
while  his  intuitive  penetration  into  the  ultimate  sources  of 
poetic  greatness  gave  them  permanent  value. 

Dryden,  though  he  perhaps  represented  his  age  more  fully 
than  any  other  single  man,  was  but  one  of  a  distinguished 
group  of  writers.  Temple's  essays  may  hardly  rise  above  cul- 
tured mediocrity,  but  they  reflect  in  their  clear  judgments  and 
facile  style  the  best  taste  of  the  men  of  letters  of  the  day ;  Hali- 
fax, in  the  Character  of  a  Trimmer,  used  a  glorified  form  of  the 
character,  or,  perhaps,  rather  of  the  character-essay,  to  set  forth 
his  ideas  on  politics;  Defoe's  Essay  on  Projects  is  the  epitome 
of  his  age  in  its  curiosity  and  inventiveness.  More  enduring 
in  human  interest  than  any  of  these  are  the  essays  of  Abraham 
Cowley,  published  as  early  as  1668,  and  carrying  on  in  this 
skeptical  and  critical  period  the  tradition  of  the  meditative  per- 
sonal essay.  These  Essays  in  Verse  and  Prose,  the  work  of  a 
minor  poet  of  a  by-gone  school,  have  a  charm  that  is  all  their 
own.  It  is  chiefly  in  them  that  Cowley,  the  darling  of  his  gener- 
ation and  the  master  of  Dryden's  youth,  lives  to-day.  In  such 
essays  as  those  on  The  Garden  and  The  Danger  of  Procrastina- 
tion, Of  Himself  and  Of  Solitude,  he  reveals  with  singular  direct- 
ness and  informality  the  manner  of  man  that  he  was.  Made  a 
poet,  he  tells  us,  before  he  was  twelve  years  old,  by  the  reading 
of  Spenser's  poems;  torn  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  from  Cam- 
bridge, his  beloved  university,  by  "that  violent  Public  storm 
which  .  .  .  rooted  up  every  Plant,  even  from  the  Princely 
Cedars  to  me  the  Hyssop"  ; l  suffering  in  the  misfortunes  of  the 
royal  family  and  sharing  but  scantily  in  its  successes,  he  led  a 
life  marked  by  strange  and  painful  vicissitudes.  But,  if  one  may 
1  "Of  Myself."  Essays,  Plays,  and  Sundry  Verses,  ed.  190G,  p.  457. 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  29 

judge  from  his  writings,  outer  misfortunes  hardly  touched  the 
serenity  of  Cowley's  spirit;  his  essays  take  us  from  the  storms  of 
public  life  into  the  placid  days  of  a  lover  of  quiet  and  books, 
into  the  tranquil  meditations  of  a  poet  and  thinker,  who,  with- 
out the  reach  of  Montaigne  or  the  exquisite  concreteness  of 
Lamb,  has  something  of  the  humanity  and  disinterestedness  of 
both. 

The  critical  essay,  made  illustrious  by  Dryden,  was  quickly 
superseded  by  the  popular  periodical  essay,  with  its  brief  treat- 
ment of  occasional  themes.  For  the  rapid  development  and  im- 
mediate influence  of  this  new  essay -form  there  were  excellent 
reasons.  Its  presentation  of  everyday  people  and  problems 
satisfied  the  social  instincts  of  the  age,  while  the  brevity  of  the 
papers,  the  regularity  with  which  they  appeared,  and  even  the 
commonplaceness  of  most  of  their  subjects,  made  the  strongest 
of  appeals  to  the  general  reader,  to  whom  they  were  primarily 
addressed.  For  general  readers  in  the  years  immediately 
following  the  Restoration  were  comparative  strangers  to 
books,  and  had  neither  the  wide  range  of  interest  nor  the  in- 
tellectual discipline  that  could  make  them  at  home  in  the  new 
world  of  letters.  The  critical  essay  —  even  Dryden's  —  they  left 
to  the  circle  of  professional  writers  and  the  coterie  of  aesthetes, 
ladies  or  gentlemen,  who  aspired  to  culture;  for  themselves 
they  asked  lighter  entertainment,  or  at  best  the  amusing  dis- 
cussion of  more  obvious  and  universal  matters.  Immediately 
after  the  Restoration,  they  had,  indeed,  made  few  demands  on 
the  world  of  letters,  being  apparently  content,  after  the  long 
years  of  civil  disorder,  with  as  complete  an  isolation  from  lit- 
erature as  from  public  affairs.  But  it  was  not  long  till  they 
were  called  from  their  intellectual  seclusion  by  the  renewed 
attacks  of  the  king  on  church  and  state;  and,  once  stirred  by 
the  satire  of  Absalom  and  Achitophel,  these  honest  Englishmen 
were  ready,  first  to  venture  somewhat  further  in  a  literature 
that  clasped  hands  with  politics,  and  then  to  follow  the  lead  of 
the  essayist  into  regions  hitherto  unexplored  by  them.  In  the 
beginning,  however,  the  chasm  that  divided  would-be  polite 


1 


30    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

readers  from  polite  writers  was  still  incredibly  wide:  there  ex- 
isted between  the  two  neither  a  range  of  common  interests  nor 
any  established  medium  of  communication.  But  though  they 
were  for  the  moment  far  apart,  the  means  for  bringing  them 
together  was  not  far  to  seek,  the  daily  press  having,  in  how- 
ever primitive  fashion,  already  established  a  connection  be- 
tween the  venders  and  the  buyers  of  news. 

In  this  state  of  affairs,  a  series  of  "projects,"  or  of  what  we 
might  to-day  in  more  high-sounding  language  call  fortunate 
journalistic  ventures,  opened  the  way  for  the  further  develop- 
ment of  the  essay  by  pressing  literature  into  the  service  of  the 
newspapers.  John  Dunton,  in  1690,  established  the  Athenian 
Gazette,  the  title  of  which  was  changed  in  the  second  number  to 
the  Athenian  Mercury,  a  paper  proposing  to  answer  all  ques- 
tions of  correspondents  and  actually  covering  a  very  wide 
range  of  subjects.  In  1704  Defoe  founded  his  Review,  in  which 
vigorous  discussion  of  public  affairs  and  the  famous  Scandal 
Club's  censure  of  manners  and  morals  marked  a  distinct  ad- 
vance both  toward  the  popularity  of  the  essay  and  toward  a 
more  literary  quality  in  the  journal.  And  finally  in  the  Tatler, 
founded  in  1709,  and  the  Spectator,  established  two  years  later, 
Steele  and  Addison,  among  the  foremost  literary  artists  of  the 
day,  annexed  a  new  province  to  literature  by  publishing  in  the 
periodical  journal  short  informal  essays  on  general  subjects, 
through  which  they  set  out  to  please  or  interest  a  still  wider 
circle  of  readers. 

The  newspaper,  which  Dunton  was  first  to  use  in  the  service 
of  the  general  reader,  had  long  been  moving  toward  that  affilia- 
tion with  literature  which  was  finally  assured  by  the  establish- 
ment of  the  Spectator.  Whether  we  count  its  history  as  begin- 
ning in  1622,  with  the  publication  of  the  Weehely  N ewes,  from 
Italy,  Germanie,  Hungeria,  etc.,  the  first  paper  regularly  issued 
in  England,  or  trace  it  to  the  accounts  of  some  particular  ex- 
citing event  circulated  through  the  early  broadsheets  and 
newsletters,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  newspaper  had  its 
origin  in  the  desire  to  tell  or  to  learn  what  was  going  on  in  the 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  31 

world.  News  —  first  from  foreign  parts,  and  later,  of  domestic 
affairs  —  filled  the  newsbooks,  the  newspamphlets  and  the 
newspapers,  which,  in  spite  of  all  obstacles,  increased  steadily 
after  1622  and  multiplied  exceedingly  during  the  years  of  civil 
strife.  The  innumerable  Mercuries  and  Gazettes  which  carried 
news  through  the  three  kingdoms  were  in  most  ways  insignifi- 
cant enough :  they  were  all  small  and  badly  printed,  their  titles 
changed  from  number  to  number,  and  designated  rather  the 
subject  of  chief  interest  than  the  name  of  the  paper;  their  pub- 
lishers were  remorselessly  prosecuted  on  the  smallest  occasion 
by  whatever  party  was  in  power.  Yet  these  apparently  insig- 
nificant sheets,  ephemeral,  rudely  printed  and  hardly  distin- 
guishable from  the  earlier  pamphlets  and  newsbooks,  had  al- 
ready, before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  taken  on 
the  character  of  politician  and  preacher  as  well  as  of  news- 
monger. Cromwell  recognized  their  power  as  shapers  of  pub- 
lic opinion  by  undertaking  the  official  publication  of  news. 
Charles  the  Second  followed,  and  improved  upon,  his  example 
by  the  establishment  of  authorized  news-organs  and  by  a  prac- 
tically prohibitive  censorship  of  other  publications. 

In  spite  of  these  efforts  of  the  parties  in  power  to  officialize 
the  newspaper,  it  gained  steadily  in  the  vitality  of  its  relation 
to  its  readers.  Sir  Roger  L'Estrange,  an  uncommonly  versa- 
tile writer  who  had  supported  the  Royalists  through  all  their 
misfortunes,  was  in  1662  appointed  one  of  the  licensers  of  the 
press,  and  later  one  of  the  supervisors  of  printing.  After  carry- 
ing on  several  papers,  always  loyal  in  their  support  of  the 
government,  he  founded  the  Observator  in  1681  to  defend  the 
court  against  charges  of  popery.  A  journalist  of  great  ability, 
he  saw  the  advantage,  in  a  time  when  party  feeling  ran  high, 
of  putting  his  case  vividly  before  the  public,  and  so  decided 
to  enliven  the  scanty  matter  that  he  was  allowed  to  print  by 
throwing  it  into  the  form  of  questions  and  answers.  The  rea- 
son for  this  departure,  as  explained  in  the  Preface  to  the  first 
volume  of  the  Observator,  involves  a  recognition  of  the  duty  of 
the  press,  if  it  is  to  guide  public  opinion,  not  only  to  set  forth 


32    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

facts  but  to  appeal  to  the  emotions  and  the  intelligence  of  its 
readers.  "The  Common  people"  he  says,  "are  Poyson'd  and 
will  run  Stark  Mad  if  they  be  not  Cur'd:  Offer  them  Reason, 
without  Fooling ,  and  it  will  never  Down  with  them:  And  give 
them  Fooling,  without  Argument,  they  're  never  the  Better  for  't. 
Let  'em  Alone  and  All 's  Lost  So  that  the  Mixture  is  become  as 
Necessary  as  the  Office;  And  it  has  been  My  Part  only  to  Season 
the  One  with  the  Other"  1  The  modern  reader  seldom  finds  the 
folly  of  the  Observator  amusing  or  its  argument  convincing;  but 
in  L'Estrange's  various  addresses  to  "the  Ignorant,  the  Sedi- 
tious, or  the  Schismatical  Reader,"  there  is  a  vigor  and  finish 
that  mark  an  epoch  in  newspaper  style. 

Among  the  influences  constantly  making  for  the  more  effec- 
tive presentation  of  news  in  the  papers  was  the  newsletter, 
which,  being  uncensored,  could  deal  more  freely  with  current 
events,  and  was,  during  these  formative  years,  even  more 
widely  circulated  than  the  printed  journals.  The  newsletter, 
possibly  the  original  of  the  later  newspaper  and  certainly  flour- 
ishing before  it,  is  known  to  have  existed  in  the  reign  of  Eliz- 
abeth, and,  as  general  interest  in  politics  deepened,  took  an 
increasingly  important  place  in  the  life  of  the  time.  Lords, 
country  squires,  provincial  merchants,  every  one  at  all  con- 
nected with  public  affairs,  kept  a  regular  correspondent  in 
London  or  arranged  to  get  private  news  from  some  trust- 
worthy source;  while  those  who  cared  particularly  for  the 
gossip  of  the  city  found  the  general  newsletter  at  once  more 
racy  and  more  authentic  than  the  supervised  papers.  In  the 
years  after  the  Restoration,  when  the  censorship  was  espe- 
cially severe  and  interest  in  the  social  doings  of  London  very 
strong,  the  newsletter  was  the  best  possible  means  for  bringing 
Englishmen  into  touch  with  the  capital. 

Though  in  the  nature  of  the  case  few  newsletters  are  now 
accessible,  there  is  sufficient  testimony  both  to  their  wide  popu- 
larity and  to  their  power  in  forming  public  opinion.  Sir  Roger 
L'Estrange,  in  the  second  Preface  to  the  Observator,  declared 
1  "To  the  Reader,"  Observator,  vol.  I. 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  33 

that  the  seditious  were  keeping  "the  People  Warm,  and 
Waking:  with  Libells,  and  News-Letters;  Seditious  Doctrines; 
False  Rumours,  and  Diabolical  Slanders."  l  The  Tory  fox- 
hunter  of  the  Freeholder  said  that  he  made  it  a  rule  never 
to  believe  the  printed  news,  and  that  he  never  saw  how  things 
were  going,  except  now  and  then  in  Dyer's  Letter.2  Far  into 
the  eighteenth  century,  references  to  the  newsletters  testify  to 
their  strong  hold  on  the  affections  of  their  readers.  The  attempt 
of  the  news-writer  to  discover  interesting  material  made  him 
the  archetype  of  the  modern  reporter,  and  there  can  be  no 
question  that  his  more  vigorous  style  and  fresher  point  of 
view,  even  when  he  took  an  unscrupulous  license  with  facts, 
pleased  his  readers  far  better  than  the  tame  and  meager  ac- 
counts of  the  licensed  papers. 

The  taste  of  the  public,  brought  up  on  the  newsletters  and 
embryonic  newspapers  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  begin- 
ning to  be  curious  about  literature  and  science  as  well  as  about 
politics  and  religion,  was  as  yet  an  unknown  quantity  when  in 
1690  Dunton  began  the  Athenian  Gazette,  or  Mercury.  This 
journal  not  only  set  out  to  offer  a  wider  range  of  entertainment 
to  men  of  business  and  leisure,  but,  what  was  much  more 
important,  actually  discovered  the  subjects  and  points  of  view 
in  which  its  middle-class  readers  were  interested.  It  was 
published  during  six  years,  and  was  from  the  first  exceedingly 
popular.  Nor  was  its  popularity  confined  to  those  to  whom  it 
was  particularly  addressed.  Dunton  testifies  that  "that  great 
and  learned  nobleman,  the  late  Marquis  of  Halifax"  once 
told  him  that  he  "constantly  perused  our  Mercuries,"3  and 
that  "so  great  a  Judge  as  the  late  Sir  William  Temple  was 
pleas  'd  not  only  to  approve  of  the  Work,  but  to  Honour  the 
Athenian  Society,  the  Authors  of  it,  with  frequent  Letters  and 
Curious  Questions,  and  to  express  his  satisfaction  in  their 
answers."  4    Swift  contributed  at  least  one  ode  to  it,  and  sent 

1  Vol.  ii.  2  No.  22,  March  5, 1716. 

8  Life  and  Errors,  ed.  1818,  vol.  i,  p.  193. 

4  "Dedication,  Athenian  Oracle,  ed.  1703,  vol.  i,  p.  2. 


34    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

with  this  ode  a  characteristic  letter  to  the  Athenian  Society.1 
This  Athenian  Society,  introduced  in  the  Athenian  Mercury  as 
answering  questions,  gave  the  idea  of  the  Scandal  Club  to  De- 
foe, and  later  the  plan  of  the  Taller  to  Steele.  The  whole  idea 
of  the  paper  seems  to  have  been  original  with  Dunton,  for 
though  L'Estrange  had  preceded  him  in  the  use  of  question 
and  answer,  he  had  used  them  as  mere  rhetorical  devices,  while 
Dunton  received  questions  on  all  subjects  and  answered  them 
in  what  were  sometimes  almost  essays.  The  questions  bring  us 
close  to  the  readers  of  the  day,  reminding  those  familiar  with 
the  answers  to  correspondents  in  our  present-day  papers  that, 
though  fashions  change,  human  nature  remains  much  the 
same.  The  replies,  ranging  from  considerations,  facetious  or 
serious,  of  lovers'  problems  to  scientific  explanations  of  the 
simpler  sort,  already  show  something  of  the  scope  of  the  later 
periodical  essay. 

Though  Dunton  was  a  valiant  pioneer  in  the  new  field, 
there  was  still  another  experiment  to  be  tried  before  the  press 
entered  into  its  final  alliance  with  literature.  Fourteen  years 
after  the  establishment  of  the  Athenian,  Defoe  began  his  fa- 
mous Review.  The  most  inventive  of  thinkers  among  the  writers 
of  his  time,  and  the  most  prolific  in  the  number  and  importance 
of  his  literary  projects,  he  made  his  Review  significant  in  the 
double  development  of  the  press  and  of  the  essay,  on  the  one 
hand  by  taking  up  in  it  the  informal  discussion  of  current 
questions,  and  on  the  other  by  using  the  reports  of  the  Scandal 
Club  as  a  means  of  social  satire  and  criticism. 

But  Defoe,  for  all  his  genius,  did  not  wholly  succeed  in  es- 
tablishing the  journal  for  which  his  age  was  looking.  With  a 
knowledge  of  common  life  that  made  him  a  few  years  later  the 
creator  of  the  realistic  novel,  and  with  prophetic  insight  into 
many  of  the  less  evident  tendencies  of  his  time,  he  was  yet  by 
his  political  partisanship  and  his  Puritanic  morality  shut  out 
from  sympathy  with  the  polite  world  which  was  to  be  the 
controlling  influence  in  the  new  essay-journal.  The  middle- 
l  Correspondence  of  Jonathan  Swift,  ed.  1910,  vol.  i,  pp.  6-8. 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  35 

class  readers  of  the  early  eighteenth  century  turned  in  their 
search  after  pleasure  and  profit,  not  to  the  projector  of  novel 
ideas  or  to  the  student  of  real  life,  but  to  the  discussions  of 
clubs  or  coffee-houses  in  which  were  centered  the  social,  intel- 
lectual, and  moral  movements  of  the  time;  and  the  men  of 
letters,  who  were  for  the  moment  intermediaries  between  the 
social  and  political  leaders  and  the  wider  public,  anxious  to 
form  itself  on  them,  were  able  to  use  the  periodical  essay,  de- 
veloped by  several  decades  of  experiment,  as  a  means  of  com- 
municating ideas  and  disseminating  culture.  Steele,  prince  of 
club-men  and  one  of  the  most  brilliant  writers  of  his  genera- 
tion, demonstrated  its  social  and  literary  possibilities  by  the 
publication  of  the  Taller  from  1709  to  1711.  But  it  was  in  the 
Spectator,  jointly  undertaken  by  Steele  and  Addison  a  few 
months  after  the  Tatler  had  ceased  to  exist,  that  this  type  of 
essay  finally  found  itself,  at  once  achieving  a  perfection  to 
which  all  previous  attempts  had  vainly  aspired  and  on  which 
all  future  attempts  were  to  form  themselves. 

The  Tatler  and  Spectator  were  fortunate  in  that  each  of  their 
principal  authors  impressed  on  it  something  of  his  own  peculiar 
character.  Steele,  quickened  to  the  perception  by  his  office 
as  government  gazetteer,  was  the  first  to  recognize  the  op- 
portunities of  a  journal  divorced  entirely  from  politics,  and 
thus  free  to  treat  non-partisan  matters  more  adequately 
than  had  been  done  by  its  predecessors.  In  the  first  number 
of  the  Tatler  he  laid  down  the  literary  programme  that  was 
followed,  not  only  by  the  Tatler  itself  and  the  Spectator,  but 
by  their  innumerable  successors  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
His  intellectual  qualities  fitted  him,  moreover,  to  make  his 
somewhat  daring  venture  immediately  successful.  He  was 
imaginative  and  inventive,  constantly  suggesting  new  sub- 
jects and  treating  them  with  the  directness  and  feeling  that 
made  him,  after  Swift,  the  most  interesting  and  forceful  of 
the  personalities  of  his  time.  And  while  Steele  was,  in  fresh- 
ness and  vividness  of  perception,  among  the  most  gifted  of 
journalists,  Addison  was  essentially  the  critic  and  man  of 


36    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

letters.  To  the  undertaking  vigorously  inaugurated  by  his 
friend,  he  brought  wide  scholarship,  exquisite  artistic  sense,  a 
humor  unmatched  in  delicacy  and  playful  kindliness,  a  stabil- 
ity of  purpose  that  from  the  beginning  added  weight  to  the 
common  enterprise.  Though  each  of  these  writers  has  left  his 
individual  mark  on  it,  the  periodical  essay  resulting  from  their 
joint  effort  is  better  than  the  work  of  either.  Nor  could  a  less 
powerful  union  have  availed  to  make  the  best  literature  truly 
popular,  and  the  journals  through  which  the  rank  and  file  of 
readers  were  reached  a  means  for  expressing  the  more  perma- 
nent and  vital  human  interests. 

But  Addison  and  Steele  did  even  more  than  this.  In  their 
hands  the  periodical  essay  quickly  proved  itself  the  distinctive 
literary  instrument  of  its  age,  and  as  such  wielded  for  a  few 
years  an  influence  parallel  in  its  different  sphere  to  that  of  the 
drama  in  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  Steele  chose  as  the  motto  for 
the  early  Toilers,  "Quicquid  agunt  homines  nostri  farrago  li- 
belli,"  and,  true  to  the  spirit  embodied  in  this  motto,  he  and 
his  coadjutors  in  the  Taller  and  the  Spectator  ignored  the  in- 
terest or  point  of  view  of  no  possible  class  of  readers.  Addison's 
papers  on  Chevy  Chase  and  Paradise  Lost  must  have  been 
eagerly  watched  for  by  the  poets  at  Wills's  and  the  learned  men 
at  the  Grecian;  and,  elementary  as  were  the  aesthetic  ideas  of 
the  author,  his  analysis  of  the  nature  and  function  of  the 
imagination  was  no  less  significant  in  the  history  of  critical 
theory  than  his  discussion  of  epic  and  ballad.  Subjects  as 
technical  as  these  were  mingled  with  more  popular  themes, 
with  criticisms  of  a  new  opera  or  of  the  latest  fashion  of  head- 
dress, with  dissertations  on  the  prevalent  treatment  of  servants 
or  the  evils  of  a  false  social  pride.  And  even  more  character- 
istic of  the  periodical  essays  than  this  range  of  subject- 
matter  was  the  simple,  yet  varied,  style  that  brought  their 
message  home  to  a  widening  circle  of  readers.  Lucidity,  force, 
and  delicate  adequacy  of  expression  were,  indeed,  general 
characteristics  of  the  prose  of  the  period;  but  nowhere  else 
were  these  qualities  so  fused  by  the  courteous  ease  that  was 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  37 

the  ideal  of  a  constituency  still  thoroughly  aristocratic  in  its 
democracy. 

Nor  did  the  periodical  essays  represent  the  age  only  in  the 
range  of  their  interests  and  the  social  grace  of  their  style :  as  the 
most  direct  medium  of  communication  between  the  leaders  of 
thought  and  their  middle-class  readers  they  readily  lent  them- 
selves, through  the  popularizing  of  knowledge  and  the  culture 
of  taste,  to  the  prevailing  enthusiasm  for  reform.  The  essayist 
declares  with  almost  wearisome  iteration  his  intention  to  make 
right  and  right  reason  prevail;  he  can  hardly  tell  a  story  with- 
out pointing  the  way  to  its  moral.  Nowhere  is  this  ethical 
spirit  more  clearly  evident  than  in  the  treatment  of  manners. 
In  the  study  of  this  theme,  a  subject  as  absorbing  to  the  age  of 
Anne  as  "humours"  had  been  to  the  later  Elizabethans,  the 
writers  of  the  time  paint  us  pictures  unsurpassed  in  exquisite 
precision.  But  they  do  more:  they  pass  beyond  the  portrayal 
of  manners  to  an  interpretation  of  their  significance,  making 
the  discussion  of  them  a  means  of  revealing  new  values  in  hu- 
man life  and  so  of  enlightening  the  minds  and  elevating  the 
morals  of  their  readers. 

With  the  success  of  the  Spectator,  the  periodical  essay 
had  not  only  found  its  audience,  but  had  established  as  its 
characteristic  manner  that  "peculiar  intimacy  with  the 
public,"  l  inherited  from  the  personal,  revelatory  essay  of 
Montaigne,  which  has  ever  since  been  its  infallible  mark.  The 
greatness  of  Steele's  and  Addison's  achievement  may  to  a  de- 
gree be  measured  by  the  breadth  and  permanence  of  their 
influence.  The  new  periodical  essay  had  hardly  shaped  itself 
in  their  hands  to  the  requirements  of  a  news-reading,  curious 
public,  when  the  creative  impulse  of  the  century  began  to  run 
in  other  lines:  when  Pope  enriched  poetry  with  the  humane 
philosophy  of  his  maturity,  when  Swift  opened  a  new  world  of 
satire  in  Gulliver,  when  Defoe  and  Richardson  and  Fielding 
marked  out  in  their  realistic  study  of  everyday  life  the  course 
that  modern  fiction  was  in  the  main  to  follow.  But  though, 
1  Leigh  Hunt,  "Periodical  Essays,"  Examiner,  no.  2. 


38    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

after  Addison  and  Steele,  the  greatest  work  of  the  greatest 
writers  of  the  century  was  done  in  other  fields,  there  was  hardly 
one  of  those  writers  who  did  not  leave  a  record  of  himself  in  the 
periodical  essay.  Defoe,  who  had  contributed  only  less  than 
Addison  and  Steele  to  its  formation,  wrote  later  in  the  new 
fashion,  and  even,  in  the  Universal  Spectator  in  1727,  attempted 
to  revive  amidst  its  degenerate  successors  a  worthy  follower 
of  the  original  Spectator.  Swift  found  time,  in  spite  of  his 
absorption  in  politics,  to  write  periodical  essays  unequaled 
in  humor  and  vigor;  and  Pope,  in  his  papers  in  the  Guardian, 
discoursed  at  large,  in  essay -form,  though  hardly  in  the  manner 
of  the  born  essayist,  on  his  literary  and  personal  tastes. 

An  interesting  adaptation  of  the  periodical  essay  to  practical 
purposes  is  seen  in  the  Free-Thinker,  started  by  Ambrose  Phil- 
ips in  1718  to  propagate  the  liberal  doctrines  of  the  Whigs.  To 
this  end  he  sought,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Spectator,  to  inculcate 
correct  habits  of  thought  rather  than  directly  to  uphold  his 
political  doctrines.  He  devoted  much  space  to  the  foibles  of 
beaux  and  belles,  and  was  especially  liberal  in  his  attention  to 
the  ladies,  since  he  hoped,  he  said,  "in  the  End  to  get  them  upon 
the  Level  with  my  own  Sex,  in  our  boasted  Superiority  of  Rea- 
son." l  But  the  whole  tone  of  the  papers  is  more  than  usually 
serious  in  its  playfulness.  Accepting  as  his  fundamental  prin- 
ciple the  necessity  of  that  freedom  of  thought  to  which  he  re- 
garded his  country  and  party  as  pledged,  he  repeatedly  turned 
from  a  criticism  of  some  fashionable  folly  to  urge  the  necessity  to 
progress  of  a  right  curiosity;  or  to  insist  upon  the  need  of  stren- 
uous thought  among  men  who  in  spite  of  reputed  intelligence 
can  stand  "both  for  Maxims  in  Politics,  and  for  Doctrines  in 
Religion,  which  are  directly  opposite"; 2  or  to  praise  the  excel- 
lence of  the  disposition,  open-minded  and  without  touch  of 
fanaticism,  that  makes  for  true  liberty.  But  in  spite  of  his  seri- 
ousness, the  Pree-Thinker  seldom  forgot  that  he  was  making 
"Philosophy  the  Amusement  of  Coffee  Houses,  Tea  Tables, 
and  Assemblies,"  and  so  if  he  did  not  speak  like  a  man  of  the 
1  Free-Thinker,  no.  3.  2  Ibid.,  no.  10. 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  39 

world,  would  run  the  danger  "of  loosing  that  Freedom  of 
Temper  which  distinguishes  a  Sociable  Philosopher  from  a 
Cynick."  * 

The  influence  of  the  Spectator  upon  succeeding  generations 
was  even  more  marked  than  upon  its  contemporaries.  Its 
manner,  indeed,  ruled  the  eighteenth  century,  and,  with  a 
difference,  remained  a  moving  power  in  the  nineteenth.  Of  the 
age  of  Johnson  and  Goldsmith,  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that 
all  its  writers  were  occasionally  periodical  essayists.  Johnson 
not  only  enrolled  himself  among  them  but  even  pressed  into  the 
service  of  the  Rambler  his  friend  Richardson  and  four  ladies, 
whose  names  are  now  hardly  a  memory.  Fielding,  a  constant 
dabbler  in  journalism,  discoursed  in  the  Covent  Garden  Journal 
on  many  subjects;  the  papers  on  criticism,  hypocrisy  and  taste 
—  which  last  he  derived  from  "a  nice  harmony  between  the 
imagination  and  the  judgment"  2  —  being  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic.  Cowper  the  solitary,  and  Lord  Chesterfield  the 
worldly,  contributed  to  the  Connoisseur;  and  the  World  boasted 
essays  by  Horace  Walpole.  In  the  following  century  writers 
innumerable,  from  Irving  to  Stevenson,  made  the  Spectator 
their  model.  Hazlitt's  first  important  contribution  to  literature 
was  the  Round  Table,  papers  written  for  the  Examiner  "  in  the 
manner  of  the  early  periodical  essayists,  the  Spectator  and  the 
Tatler."  3  Leigh  Hunt,  introducing  himself  in  the  same  paper 
only  a  few  years  earlier,  had  traced  his  pedigree  past  Goldsmith 
and  the  "melancholy  Rambler,"  to  Addison,  the  earliest  and 
the  most  original  of  the  essayists  on  whom  he  patterned  him- 
self.4 

The  periodical  essays  of  the  eighteenth  century  are  delightful 
reading,  full  of  wit,  and  picturing  the  life  of  their  time  with 
only  less  intimacy  than  do  the  letters  of  Walpole,  Gray  and 
Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montague.  Yet,  with  all  the  charm  of  the 

1  Free-Thinker,  nos.  23,  28. 

2  Covent  Garden  Journal,  no.  10,  Works,  ed.  1871,  vol.  x,  p.  28. 

3  "Advertisement  to  the  Round  Table,"  ed.  1817,  Works,  ed.  1902-4, 
vol.  i,  p.  xxxi. 

5.    4  "Periodical  Essays,"  Examiner,  no.  2. 


40    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

writers  in  this  period,  only  two  of  them,  Samuel  Johnson  and 
Oliver  Goldsmith,  have  left  us  essays  marked  with  peculiar 
individuality  and  power.  Antipodal  at  every  point  to  the  facile 
Goldsmith,  whose Jmmor  and  tact  kept  the  severest  subjects 
from  more  than  a  touch  of  gravity,  was  the  weighty-worded 
doctor,  who,  "notable  truth-teller  though  he  was,"  could  not 
always  resist  making  his  little  fishes  talk  like  great  whales. 
At  first  sight  too  dogmatic  and  serious-minded  for  so  light 
and  flexible  a  fashion  of  writing,  he  had  yet  the  good  sense  and 
firm  grasp  of  facts  that  are  the  essayist's  first  gifts,  and  all 
his  contributions  to  periodicals,  from  the  time  when  he  began 
to  write  for  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  are  marked  by  the  in- 
tegrity, moral  and  intellectual,  that  makes  him  the  command- 
ing personality  of  his  generation.  The  Rambler,  undertaken 
when  the  Dictionary  was  still  unfinished,  and  before  his  posi- 
tion in  literary  London  was  fully  assured,  suggests  by  its  som- 
ber reflections  and  sonorous  style  his  indomitable  spirit.  The 
Idler,  written  eight  years  later,  after  he  had  finished  his  great 
task,  and  after  the  Connoisseur  and  the  World  had  tuned  the 
essay-manner  to  the  social  key  of  their  own  day,  shows  him  in 
more  conventional  but  hardly  in  happier  vein.  Each  series  of 
essays  has  its  peculiar  charm;  the  grim  humor  of  The  Advan- 
tages of  Living  in  a  Garret,  and  the  undertone  of  heroic  endur- 
ance in  Literary  Courage,  though  more  characteristic  of  the 
author,  are  hardly  finer  than  the  inimitable  portrait  of  Dick 
Minim,  which,  while  conforming  to  literary  fashion,  shows  to 
the  full  Johnson's  power  of  seeing  and  portraying  personality. 
Yet,  last  as  first,  Johnson's  essays  have  a  touch  of  arrogance 
and  weighty  dignity  which  somewhat  overburdens  so  familiar 
a  form  of  writing:  they  are  great  because  the  author  has  over- 
come in  them  the  difficulties  of  an  alien  medium  rather  than 
because  that  medium  inevitably  lent  itself  to  his  purpose. 

Goldsmith,  on  the  other  hand,  was  from  the  first  at  home  in 
the  chatty  informality  of  the  periodical  essay.  In  his  use  of  it 
to  open  up  new  lines  of  speculation,  as  well  as  in  his  wide  range 
of  interests  and  his  highly  wrought  sensibility,  he  resembled 


THE  ENGLISH   ESSAY  41 

Steele,  the  great  essay-journalist  of  the  earlier  generation.  Of 
all  the  essay-writers  of  the  later  eighteenth  century,  he  was,  in- 
deed, the  most  sensitive  to  the  moulding  social  forces  of  his 
time,  the  most  conscious  of  that  spirit  of  the  morrow  which 
gives  a  touch  of  prophecy  to  the  literature  of  to-day.  The  ex- 
periences of  his  early  life,  though  they  were  the  result  of  his  own 
character  and  temperament,  turned  the  Bohemianism  that  was 
his  by  nature  into  some  understanding  of  the  main  currents  of 
European  thought.  Restless  from  his  youth,  and  ever  impelled 
to  see  or  hear  some  new  thing,  he  had,  in  spite  of  poverty,  trav- 
eled much  on  the  continent  before  he  settled  in  London  at  the 
age  of  twenty-seven;  and  this  knowledge  of  foreign  countries, 
won  with  a  light-hearted  endurance  thoroughly  characteristic 
of  him,  made  him  the  effective  spokesman  in  England  of  the  cos- 
mopolitanism which  in  the  years  before  the  French  Revolution 
was  breaking  down  the  boundaries  of  national  prejudices  in 
Europe.  With  such  a  disposition  and  training,  Goldsmith  in- 
evitably differed  from  Johnson,  not  only  in  the  phases  of  con- 
temporary life  with  which  he  dealt,  but  in  the  spirit  with  which 
he  treated  them;  he  was  as  free  from  national  prejudices  as 
Johnson  was  full  of  them,  was  as  truly  cosmopolitan  in  feeling 
as  Johnson  was  an  Englishman  and  a  Londoner.  In  an  early 
essay  he  declared  that  if  it  were  necessary  to  hate  other  coun- 
tries in  order  to  love  one's  own,  he  would  "prefer  the  title  of 
the  ancient  philosopher,  viz.,  a  citizen  of  the  world,  to  that  of 
an  Englishman,  a  Frenchman,  or  European,  or  to  any  other 
appellation  whatever."  l  It  was  thus  as  the  expression  of  a 
long-established  point  of  view  that  he  chose  The  Citizen  of  the 
World  as  the  title  for  a  series  of  essays  published  in  the  Ledger, 
and  made  his  Spectator  a  Chinese  philosopher  already  thor- 
oughly familiar  with  the  life  of  Europe.  Through  this  censor, 
provided  with  a  disinterested  as  well  as  a  novel  point  of  view,  he 
was  able  to  represent,  not  only  the  new  enthusiasm  for  human- 
ity, but  the  sensibility  and  realism  that  were  everywhere  niani- 

1  "Essay  on  National  Prejudices,"  Miscellaneous  Works,  ed.  18G7,  vol.  I, 
p.  232. 


42    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

festing  themselves  as  forces  to  be  reckoned  with.  These  quali- 
ties are,  indeed,  hardly  less  conspicuous  in  his  essays  than  in  his 
poems  and  novels :  the  pathos  that  overshadows  The  Deserted 
Village  is  not  wanting  in  A  City  Night-Piece;  the  Man  in  Black 
is  of  the  same  family  as  Dr.  Primrose;  and  the  humor  that 
pictures  the  absurdities  of  Moses  inspires  the  portrait  of  Beau 
Tibbs. 

The  eighteenth-century  readers  who  amused  their  leisure 
with  the  Spectator  or  the  Connoisseur  turned  in  their  serious 
hours  to  the  critical  essay  with  its  more  thorough  treatment  of 
weightier  subjects.  For  the  critical  essay,  though  far  behind 
the  periodical  in  brilliancy  and  popularity,  had  in  the  eighteenth 
century  an  interesting  history  of  its  own.  It  was,  to  be  sure, 
singularly  slow  in  development.  Dryden's  Essay  on  Dramatic 
Poesie  —  or,  as  its  original  title  reads,  Of  Dramatick  Poesie,  an 
Essay  —  was  published  more  than  fifty  years  before  the  Toiler; 
yet  not  until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century  did  the 
critical  essay  rival  the  periodical  in  social  influence.  But  the 
years  lying  between  these  more  glorious  epochs  of  its  history 
were  rich  in  experiments,  and  the  essays  written  in  them, 
though  little  known  to-day,  reflected  every  phase  of  public 
opinion  and  popular  taste. 

In  an  age  preeminently  political,  the  political  essay  natu- 
rally held  the  first  place;  and  Addison,  Swift,  Philips  and 
Fielding  were  but  a  few  of  those  who  used  it  to  support  their 
parties  or  their  principles.  The  social  enthusiasm  then  rap- 
idly developing  showed  itself  in  a  multitude  of  essays,  deal- 
ing with  reforms  in  education  or  literature,  in  politics  or 
society,  among  which  Defoe's  Essay  on  Projects  is  perhaps 
the  most  famous.  Particularly  evident  was  the  literary  curi- 
osity of  the  new  reading  public,  athirst  for  knowledge,  and, 
in  spite  of  its  strongly  practical  bent,  eager  to  make  its  own 
the  world  of  books  that  had  been  hitherto  accessible  only  to 
the  learned.  The  literary  essay  thus  became  the  interpreter 
of  the  scholarship  and  taste  of  the  day.  The  essay-preface, 
already  made  illustrious  by  Dryden's  use,  lent  itself  to  the 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  43 

different  tasks  of  Pope  and  Johnson;  Fielding  introduced  into 
his  novels,  as  preface  or  essay-interlude,  a  form  of  the  critical 
essay  in  which  he  familiarly  discussed  the  mysteries  of  his 
craft;  more  pedestrian  scholarship  threw  its  bulky  studies  into 
works  like  Spence's  Essay  on  Pope's  Odyssey  or  Joseph  War- 
ton's  two-volume  Essay  on  the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope. 
But  the  most  characteristic  of  the  critical  essays  of  the  cen- 
tury were  inspired  not  by  the  burning  issues  of  politics,  not  by 
the  alluring  schemes  of  reformers,  not  even  by  the  world  of 
literature  that  was  opening  more  widely  both  to  the  general 
reader  and  to  the  scholar:  they  were  rather  the  outcome  of  that 
practical  philosophy  of  life,  with  its  passion  for  reason  and  for 
humanity,  that  is  the  distinctive  mark  of  the  age  of  enlighten- 
ment. Nowhere  does  this  temper  find  better  expression  than  in 
the  volume  published  in  1711  by  Lord  Shaftesbury,  under  the 
title  Characteristics  of  Men,  Manners,  Opinions,  Times.  Essays 
in  fact  even  when  thrown  into  the  form  of  letter  or  reflections, 
these  discussions  of  wit,  or  humor,  or  enthusiasm,  or  the  con- 
ditions of  authorship,  take  us  into  the  innermost  circle  of  the 
gentlemen-thinkers,  who,  in  the  days  of  Addison  and  Swift, 
were  forming  the  ideas  of  coming  generations.    They  are, 
indeed,  the  very  incarnation  of  that  ardent  faith  in  intel- 
lectual liberty,  tempered  into  courtesy  by  the  decorous  or- 
dering of  life,  that  animated  the  best  thinking  of  the  time. 
Their  plea  for  freedom  of  discussion;  for  a  goodness,  human 
or  divine,  that  conforms  to  law;  for  the  beauty  of  intellectual 
and  spiritual  sanity;  for  a  noble  virtuosoship  in  morality, 
carries  the  thought  backward  to  Montaigne  and  Plato  as 
well  as  forward  to  the  nineteenth  century.    Their  largeness 
of  vision  and  fervency  of  conviction  lose  little  and  gain  much 
from  the  fact  that  Characteristics  was  written  by  a  gentle- 
man for  gentlemen,  and  thus  professedly  voiced  the  ideal  of 
a  coterie  rather  than  that  of  humanity.    By  establishing  the 
essential  principles  that  should  prevail  in  a  society  whose  mem- 
bers are  truly  equal  and  free,  these  essays  were  able  not  only  to 
embody  the  best  social  philosophy  of  their  day,  but,  by  liberat- 


44    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

ing  this  philosophy  from  the  limitations  of  a  too  imme- 
diate application,  to  establish  a  more  perfect  conception  of 
democracy  than  was  possible  in  the  actual  society  of  that 
time. 

The  critical  essay,  in  its  development  during  this  hundred 
years,  repeated  in  a  particular  field  the  history  of  the  essay  of 
the  seventeenth  century.  Though  established  in  general  use,  it 
had  not  yet  clearly  recognized  its  function  or  wholly  succeeded 
in  finding  its  audience;  it  was,  in  fact,  only  partially  socialized, 
and  so  lost  itself  in  experiment,  toiled  rather  than  achieved. 
The  strength  of  the  spirit  that  was  framing  for  itself  this  new 
medium  of  communication  appeared  more  clearly  in  other  and 
apparently  unrelated  fields  of  literature,  where,  however  unex- 
pectedly, it  proved  itself  the  controlling  power.  For  the  ra- 
tional, disinterested  temper  that  naturally  finds  expression  in 
the  essay  passed  for  the  time  beyond  what  might  by  any  license 
be  considered  its  proper  sphere,  and  infused  with  something  of 
its  own  distinctive  quality  writings  the  most  remote  from  it 
in  character  and  aim.  It  would  certainly  be  an  unwarranted 
stretching  of  terms  to  include  either  Locke's  Essay  Concerning 
the  Human  Understanding  or  Pope's  Essay  on  Man  in  a  discus- 
sion of  the  essay  proper.  But  the  title  as  well  as  the  method  of 
Locke's  greatest  work  suggests  the  close  connection  existing 
between  the  essay  and  the  skeptical,  philosophic  point  of  view 
so  characteristic  of  the  time.  The  adoption  of  the  essay-method 
for  his  most  important  poem  by  the  greatest  poet  of  the  age  is 
even  more  significant.  Whether  the  result  is  or  is  not  poetry, 
this  couplet-discussion  of  great  themes  furnishes  the  best  pos- 
sible illustration  of  the  dominance  in  every  age  of  the  prevailing 
attitude  of  mind  over  the  most  diverse  forms  of  literature.  For 
the  essay  in  going  beyond  its  own  boundaries  and  usurping  the 
functions  of  other  literary  types  was  but  seeking  a  wider 
expression  for  the  essentially  scientific,  critical  and  rational 
spirit  of  the  early  eighteenth  century.  In  the  universal  insist- 
ence upon  law,  and,  in  the  social  sphere,  upon  conduct,  atten- 
tion was  for  the  moment  concentrated  on  the  more  evident  and 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  45 

demonstrable  aspects  of  experience,  so  comparatively  easy  of 
classification.  The  widening  of  the  intellectual  horizon  on  one 
side  had  meant  the  closing  in  of  it  on  another;  and  in  enthusi- 
asm for  the  new  world  of  rational  endeavor  and  moral  conquest, 
the  mysteries  of  existence,  whether  in  the  outer  world  or  in 
man's  inner  experience,  were  for  the  time  almost  forgotten.  A 
conception  of  life  at  once  simple  and  objective,  social  and  utili- 
tarian, conditioned  all  the  intellectual  and  aesthetic  activities  of 
the  period,  subduing  even  poetry  to  its  prevailing  rationalism. 
Pope's  poetic  essays  or  essay-poems  thus  form  the  natural 

(and  illuminating  counterpart  of  the  so-called  prose-poetry  of 
DeQuincey,  and  even,  in  the  final  analysis,  of  the  imaginative 
prose  of  Bacon  and  Sidney. 
0  The  charges  oftenest  brought  against  the  essays,  periodical 
or  critical,  of  the  eighteenth  century,  are  the  obviousness  and 
triteness  of  their  thoughts.  Yet  these  undeniable  faults  are  in 
no  small  degree  the  result  of  a  modernness  of  subject  and  point 
of  view  that  makes  their  over-familiar  ideas  part  and  parcel  of 
the  life  of  to-day.  Shaftesbury's  plea  for  freedom  of  discussion 
among  thinkers  found  its  counterpart  in  John  Stuart  Mill's 
thesis  that  universal  liberty  of  speech  is  the  foundation  of  social 
progress.  Goldsmith's  ideal  of  a  culture  freed  from  narrowing 
national  prejudice  closely  paralleled  Arnold's  more  modern 
cosmopolitanism.  The  many  demands  for  the  better  education 
of  women  distinctly  foreshadowed  Mill's  declaration  of  their 
political  rights  and  Meredith's  conception  of  an  ideal  society 
enslaved  neither  by  convention  nor  by  sensuality.  Pope's 
insistence  that  genius  delights  in  nature  while  "the  little  nice- 
ties and  fantastical  operations  of  art"  l  are  pleasing  to  "people 
of  the  common  level  of  understanding"  is  but  one  of  the  several 
ties  that  connect  him  with  the  more  romantic  period  that  fol- 
lowed. An  even  deeper  likeness  is  suggested  by  Ruskin,  who 
says  that  the  serene  and  just  benevolence  of  Pope's  theology 
placed  him  two  centuries  in  advance  of  his  time,  and  that  his 
couplet  — 

1  Guardian,  no.  173. 


46    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"  Never  elated,  while  one  man  's  oppress 'd, 
Never  dejected,  while  another  's  bless 'd  "  — 

sums  up  "the  law  of  noble  life"  and  gives  "the  most  complete, 
the  most  concise  and  the  most  lofty  expression  of  moral  temper 
existing  in  English  words."  *  These  many  similarities  in  point 
of  view  between  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  nineteenth  are 
not  mere  coincidences,  but  rather  the  outcome  of  a  way  of 
looking  at  life  in  which  these  ages  are  at  one.  Over-simple  as  are 
the  generalizations  of  the  early  essayists,  we  yet  see  in  them 
abundant  illustrations  of  John  Richard  Green's  statement  that 
from  the  time  of  the  Restoration  we  find  ourselves  in  the  great 
currents  of  thought  and  activity  which  have  ever  since  gone  on 
widening  and  deepening,  but  have  not  essentially  changed 
their  direction.2 

The  success  of  the  newspaper  proper  and  of  the  periodical 
essay  moved  publishers  and  writers  in  the  eighteenth  century 
to  incessant  efforts  to  reach  the  reading  public.  In  its  very 
beginning  the  problem  of  communication  between  writer  and 
reader  seemed  to  have  been  in  great  measure  solved.  Ambrose 
Philips  wrote  in  1718:  "Of  all  the  methods  which  have  yet  been 
practiced  to  inform  Mankind,  and  to  convey  Wisdom  and 
Knowledge  to  the  Multitude,  that  of  throwing  out  short  Lec- 
tures from  the  Press  upon  Stated  Days  is  by  far  more  effectual 
and  more  convenient,  than  any  other."  3  But  though  the  Toiler, 
the  Spectator  and  their  successors  had  met  the  need  of  the 
moment,  they  were  but  pioneers;  and  their  great  but  simple 
experiment,  itself  made  possible  by  a  century  of  effort,  was  to 
be  followed  by  another  hundred  years  of  ingenious  adaptation 
to  more  complex  conditions  before  the  power  of  the  press  over 
popular  thought  could  even  be  guessed  at.  The  necessity  for 
the  further  development  of  periodical  literature  is,  of  course, 
to-day  perfectly  evident.  The  essays,  though  treating  of  many 
subjects  and  representing  widely  different  points  of  view,  were 

1  "Relation  of  Art  to  Morals,"  Lectures  on  Art,  ed.  1886,  vol.  vin,  p.  74. 

2  History  of  the  English  People,  ed.  1878-80,  vol.  in,  p.  327. 

3  Free-Thinker,  no.  23.     , 


THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  47 

originally  issued  as  single  articles  printed  separately,  de- 
pending for  variety  wholly  on  the  proper  succession  of  topics. 
Under  the  double  stimulus  of  popularity  and  cheapness  of 
production,  these  papers,  moreover,  multiplied  rapidly;  and 
the  consequent  confusion  and  waste  of  time  for  the  reader  was 
offset  by  no  great  profit  or  glory  for  the  writer.  >p^ 

But  though  the  desirability  of  larger  and  more  varied  peri- 
odicals is  to-day  evident  enough,  it  was  not  until  1731  that 
a  successful  publication  of  a  new  type  was  established.  In  that 
year  Edward  Cave  began  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  "a  collec- 
tion or  magazine,"  which  was  to  bring  together  the  interesting 
matter  contained  in  the  two  hundred  half-sheets  which  were 
thrown  off  monthly  by  the  London  press  and  the  equal  number 
which  were  printed  elsewhere  in  the  three  kingdoms.1  But  the 
publisher-editor  did  more  than  this,  adding  to  the  reviews  of 
important  papers,  which  took  something  less  than  half  his 
space,  a  brief  survey  of  remarkable  transactions,  a  few  pages  of 
poetry,  a  catalogue  of  books  published  in  the  month,  and  such 
minor  matters  as  observations  on  gardening  and  a  gardener's 
calendar.  In  its  second  year  parliamentary  reports  were  incor- 
porated in  the  magazine,  Doctor  Johnson  for  a  time  prepar- 
ing them  for  publication,  if  he  did  not  himself  act  as  a  reporter. 
There  is  some  question  whether  Cave  may  rightly  be  consid- 
ered the  inventor  of  the  magazine,  as  the  Gentleman's  Journal 
or  the  Monthly  Miscellany,  begun  just  forty  years  earlier,  an- 
ticipated the  Gentleman's  Magazine  in  its  general  plan.2  But 
if  Cave  has  not  the  undisputed  honor  of  originating  the  maga- 

1  The  following  passage  is  suggestive  of  the  nature  and  purposes  of  the 
magazine:  — 

"It  has  been  unexceptionably  advanced,  that  a  good  Abridgment  of  the  Law  is 
more  intelligible  than  the  Statutes  at  large:  so  a  nice  Model  is  as  entertaining  as 
the  Original,  and  a  true  Specimen  as  satisfactory  as  Hie  whole  Parcel :  This  may 
serve  to  illustrate  the  Reasonableness  of  our  present  Undertaking,  which  in  the 
first  place  is  to  give  Monthly  a  View  of  all  the  Pieces  of  Wit,  Humour,  or  Intelli- 
gence, daily  offer  d  to  the  Publick  in  the  News-papers,  (which  of  late  are  so  multi- 
ply d,  as  to  render  it  impossible,  unless  a  man  makes  it  a  business,  to  consult  them 
all)  and  in  the  next  place  we  shall  join  therewith  some  other  matters  of  Use  or 
Amusement  that  will  be  communicated  to  us."  Introd.,  vol.  I. 

2  J.  L.  Haney,  Early  Reviews  of  English  Poets,  cd.  1904,  Introd.,  xv. 


48    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

zine,  he  was  the  first  to  establish  it  in  popular  favor  and  to  give 
it  the  name  by  which  it  has  ever  since  been  known.  Indeed, 
the  Gentleman's  Magazine  seems  exactly  to  have  hit  the  taste 
of  the  day.  Doctor  Johnson  says  in  the  Preface  for  1738  that 
its  success  had  "given  Rise  to  almost  twenty  Imitations  of  it, 
which  are  either  all  dead,  or  very  little  regarded  by  the  World."1 
These  "imitations"  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine,  of  which 
Doctor  Johnson  spoke  so  scornfully,  though  inferior  in  almost 
every  case  to  the  original,  increased  rapidly  in  number  and 
importance.  Separate  magazines  were  early  established  for 
ladies,  which,  though  they  provided  for  the  domestic  and  frivo- 
lous interests  of  their  readers,  did  not  wholly  give  up  the  at- 
tempt of  the  Spectator  and  the  Free-Thinker  to  raise  the  sex  to 
the  same  level  with  men  in  the  "boasted  superiority  of  reason." 
The  contents  of  these  magazines  —  with  their  abbreviated 
political  news,  their  substitution  of  romances  and  moral  essays 
for  general  articles,  and  their  lengthy  reports  of  marriages, 
births  and  deaths  —  serve  chiefly  to  mark  the  chasm  that  still 
separated  the  interests  of  men  and  women  in  the  eighteenth 
century.  Yet  they  seem  to  have  met  a  very  real  need  of  their 
readers,  who,  if  we  may  judge  from  a  letter  published  in  the 
Lady's  Magazine  in  1773,  fervently  appreciated  their  double 
purpose:  "You  first  and  only  you,"  says  the  writer,  "  thought 
the  ornaments  of  the  species  worthy  of  being  made  more  orna- 
mental by  cultivating  their  understandings  at  the  same  time 
as  you  presented  them  with  rules  to  preserve,  though  not  to 
sophisticate,  their  personal  charms."  2  But  the  special  maga- 
zine for  women  was  in  those  early  days  something  of  an  ex- 
ception, editors  and  publishers  generally  attempting  to  offer 
something  to  every  one  rather  than  to  reach  any  particular 
class  of  readers  exclusively.  The  encyclopaedic  subject-matter 
of  these  "collections"  is  well  illustrated  in  the  title  and  con- 
tents of  the  Universal  Magazine  of  Knowledge  and  Pleasure, 
which  advertised  twenty-one  departments,  ranging  from  news 
and  gardening  to  philosophy  and  mathematics,  and  including 
1  Vol.  viii,  1738.  2  Feb.,  p.  64. 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  49 

all  the  arts  and  sciences  which  might  make  it  "  Instructive  and 
Entertaining  to  Gentry,  Merchants,  Farmers  and  Trades- 
men." x  Almost  every  subject  was,  in  fact,  discussed  in  the 
pages  of  the  eighteenth-century  magazine,  only  fiction  being 
regarded  as  unworthy  of  its  dignity. 

The  magazine,  because  of  its  affiliation  with  the  newspaper 
and  the  character  of  its  readers,  was  from  the  first  political 
and  practical  in  tone;  it  was  written  for  gentlemen,  trades- 
men, and  farmers  rather  than  for  scholars  or  men  of  letters, 
and  so  naturally  treated  of  books  somewhat  perfunctorily  and 
incidentally.  The  review,  representing  especially  the  inter- 
ests of  learning  and  literature,  though  of  earlier  origin,  was 
somewhat  later  in  development.  The  Journal  des  Sgavans, 
published  at  Paris  in  1665,  was,  according  to  J.  L.  Haney, 
the  first  purely  literary  journal.  It  was  followed  in  1684  by 
Pierre  Bayle's  Nouvelles  de  la  Republique  des  Lettres,  and 
probably  suggested  the  publication  in  England  in  1670  of 
a  newsbook,  of  which  but  a  single  copy  is  extant,  entitled 
the  Mercurius  Librarius;  or  a  Catalogue  of  Books  Printed  and 
Published  at  London  (1668-70).  The  first  real  English  review, 
consisting  largely  of  translations  from  the  French  Journal, 
was,  however,  issued  in  1682-1683  under  the  title  The  Weekly 
Memorial  for  the  Ingenious:  or  an  Account  of  Books  lately  set 
forth  in  Several  Languages,  with  some  other  Curious  Novelties 
relating  to  Arts  and  Sciences. 

It  was  as  the  successor  of  such  scholarly  magazines  as  these, 
mostly  collections  of  ponderous  dissertations,  that  Ralph 
Griffith  in  1749  published  his  Monthly  Review.  This  review, 
described  by  its  sub-title  as  a  "  Periodical  Work,  giving  an  Ac- 
count, with  proper  Abstracts  of,  and  Extracts  from,  the  New 
Books,  Pamphlets,  &c.  as  they  come  out,"  was  extraordinarily 
popular,  and  in  1756  was  followed  by  the  rival  Critical  Review. 
But  though  Goldsmith  spent  five  unhappy  years  writing  for 
the  one,  and  though  Smollett  was  for  a  time  editor  of  the  other, 
the  reviewers  of  the  eighteenth  century  were  for  the  most  part 

1  No.  1,  1747. 


50    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

dull  guides  of  patient  readers.  It  was  a  common  belief  that 
these  journals  were  managed  in  the  interests  of  publishers,  a 
belief  not  materially  weakened  by  the  advertisement  of  the 
Critical  that  it  was  conducted  "by  a  Society  of  Gentlemen.* ' 
Yet  with  their  many  shortcomings,  they  carried  to  the  rank 
and  file  of  readers  a  knowledge  of  books  otherwise  unattainable, 
and  in  them  the  criticism  of  literature  and  ideas  as  such  be- 
came for  the  first  time  a  subject  of  general  concern.1 

The  relation  of  newspaper  and  journal  to  the  essay  of  the 
time,  though  hard  to  trace,  appears  in  many  ways.  The  news- 
papers had  been  at  first  content  to  report  and  comment  on 
news,  leaving  questions  of  manners  and  morals  to  the  essayists. 
Gradually,  however,  they  came  to  regard  the  periodical  essay, 
or  perhaps  more  accurately  the  essay-periodical,  as  a  regular 
part  of  their  contents.  The  Idler,  for  instance,  was  published  , 
as  a  series  of  essays  in  the  Universal  Chronicle,  and  the  Citizen  ~?X 
of  the  World  in  the  Ledger.  A  wider  audience  was  thus  offered 
to  men  of  letters;  and  the  character  of  this  audience  determined 
their  writing  both  indirectly  and  directly.  The  Englishmen  of 
the  day  were  notably  given  to  substantial  reading,  a  fact  wit- 
nessed to  by  the  comments  of  thoughtful  observers,  by  the 
number  of  pamphlets  and  papers  of  all  sorts  that  were  con- 
stantly issued,  and  by  the  steady  growth  of  the  magazine, 
which,  except  for  an  occasional  poem  or  familiar  essay,  con- 
fined itself  to  serious  subjects.  Their  interest  in  the  printed 
page,  closely  parallel  in  many  respects  to  that  of  their  grand- 
fathers in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  extending  over  many 
and  diverse  fields.  Doctor  Johnson,  writing  of  the  "fugitive 
pieces"  then  in  circulation,  traced  their  wide  variety  of  char- 
acter and  humor  to  the  freedom  and  independence  which 
allowed  every  Englishman  to  inquire  at  will  into  political  and 
religious  matters,2  and  in  the  Idler  described  England  as  "a 

1  For  the  material  in  the  two  foregoing  paragraphs  I  am  indebted  largely  to 
J.  L.  Haney's  Introduction  to  Early  Reviews  of  English  Poets,  ed.  1904,  pp. 
xiii-xx. 

2  ''Essay  on  .  .  .  Small  Tracts  and  Fugitive  Pieces,"  Literary  Pamphlets, 
ed.  1897,  vol.  i,  pp.  43-4.  4 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  51 

nation  of  authors,"  asserting  that  at  that  time  the  passion  for 
writing  had  seized  old  and  young  alike;  that  the  cook  was 
warbling  her  lyrics  in  the  kitchen  and  the  thrasher  vociferating 
his  heroics  in  the  barn,  that  traders  were  dealing  out  knowledge 
in  bulky  volumes  and  girls  forsaking  their  samplers  to  teach 
kingdoms  wisdom.1  This  shrewd,  though  satiric,  characteriza- 
tion, which  seems  far  more  appropriate  to  our  day  than  to  his 
own,  reminds  us  that  the  English  nation  had  even  then  entered 
upon  an  era  of  intellectual  democracy,  and  that  democracy  was 
proving  its  vitality  by  the  constantly  increasing  cooperation  of 
the  many  in  the  creation  of  literature. 

The^strength  of  the  many  forces  that  had  long  been  prepar- 
ing for  the  f uTIeTdevelopment  of  the  essay  became  clearly  evi- 
dent in  the  years  following  the  French  Revolution,  when  by  its 
means  questions  of  politics  and  society,  of  literature  and  reli- 
gion, were  brought  directly  before  the  bar  of  popular  judgment. 
The  dominating  type  of  essay  was,  however,  at  this  time,  not 
the  short  essay  of  manners  which  had  pleased  the  readers  of  Ad- 
dison and  Steele,  but  the  popular  critical  essay,  which,  whether 
informal  or  formal  in  method,  undertakes  the  more  exhaustive 
treatment  of  special  or  technical  subjects.  The  critical  essay 
was  in  this  phase  of  its  development  as  demonstrably  related 
to  the  demands  of  its  readers  as  the  earlier  periodical  essay  had 
been  a  hundred  years  before.  Hazlitt,  reviewing  periodical 
literature  for  the  Edinburgh  in  1823,  noted  that  the  style  of 
common  conversation  had  lately  changed  from  the  personal 
and  piquant  to  the  critical  and  didactic,  while  the  more 
polished  circles,  instead  of  aiming  at  elegant  raillery  or 
pointed  repartee,  were  discussing  general  topics  and  analyzing 
abstract  problems.  With  this  marked  shifting  of  interest 
among  readers  the  time  was  ripe  for  the  critical  essay  to 
emerge  from  its  pedestrian  history  in  the  eighteenth  century 
into  a  more  brilliant  period  of  development.  Its  special  oppor- 
tunity is  defined  by  Hazlitt  as  the  conveying  of  knowledge 
from  the  specialist  to  the  lay-public,  which,  if  it  was  not 

1  Idler,  no.  2. 


52    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

learned,  at  least  cared  to  know.  "We  have,"  he  declared, 
"collected  a  superabundance  of  raw  materials:  the  grand 
desideratum  now  is,  to  fashion  and  render  them  portable. 
Knowledge  is  no  longer  confined  to  the  few:  the  object  there- 
fore is,  to  make  it  accessible  and  attractive  to  the  many."  l 
This  recognition  of  the  many  as  eager  for  the  information  and 
ideas  of  the  educated  rather  than  for  the  wit  and  wisdom  of  the 
well-bred  carries  our  thoughts  back  to  the  essay-readers  of 
earlier  generations  ;  to  the  aristocrats  and  scholars  for  whom 
Bacon  primarily  wrote,  to  the  ladies  and  gentlemen  to  whom 
Dryden  so  courteously  deferred,  to  the  would-be-polite  squires 
and  merchants  —  with  a  sprinkling  of  their  wives  and  daugh- 
ters —  for  whom  Steele  and  Addison  set  out  to  make  instruc- 
tion agreeable.  When  the  general  reader  had  at  last  come  to  be 
interested  in  "  discussing  general  topics  and  analyzing  abstract 
problems,"  it  was  inevitable  that  the  critical  essay  should  not 
only  become  a  universal  medium  of  communication,  but  that, 
in  order  to  meet  the  new  demands  made  upon  it,  it  should 
undergo  an  entire  change  in  scope  and  style. 

The  conception  that  the  chief  function  of  the  modern  essay 
was  to  popularize  knowledge  came  at  a  significant  time.  In 
1800,  two  years  before  the  Edinburgh  Review  was  founded, 
Wordsworth  in  the  Preface  to  the  Lyrical  Ballads  had  declared 
the  subject-matter  of  poetry  to  consist  of  those  elementary 
emotions  and  universal  passions  in  which  alone  the  race  is  at 
one.  Disputable  as  was  his  contention  that  these  essential 
experiences  of  mankind  are  the  especial  birthright  of  the  poor, 
he  clearly  voiced  the  demand  of  his  age  for  an  art  dealing  with 
those  activities  and  sympathies  which  are  fundamental  in  any 
genuine  society.  While  poetry  was  thus  defining  as  its  special 
province  what  we  may  call  the  common  stock  of  experience,  the 
essay  was  zealously  endeavoring  to  render  knowledge  "port- 
able," to  enrich  the  average  reader  with  the  intellectual  wealth 
that  had  hitherto  belonged  solely  to  the  scholar.  This  differ- 
ence in  aim  and  material  is  reflected  in  the  contrast  between 
1  "  The  Periodical  Press,"  Works,  ed.  1902-4,  vol.  x,  pp.  207-10. 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  53 

the  simple  language  on  which  the  new  poetry  would  insist  and 
the  involved  style  of  the  new  essay.  Where  the  one  ostenta- 
tiously boasts  the  speech  of  everyday  life,  the  other  is  armed 
in  all  the  panoply  of  a  literary  vocabulary.  The  manner  of  the 
essay  at  this  time  is,  indeed,  at  first  sight  curiously  at  variance 
with  its  professed  democracy  of  purpose;  as  the  more  informal 
and  familiar  type  yielded  in  popular  favor  to  the  "brief  trea- 
tise" and  "short  dissertation,"  the  simple  colloquial  English 
that  had  been  its  glory  was  in  great  part  supplanted  by  the 
phraseology  of  books.  For  this  change  several  reasons  suggest 
themselves:  the  new  independence  of  men  of  letters,  hardly 
achieved  after  two  generations  of  struggle,  tempted  them  to 
speak  as  those  having  authority  rather  than  with  the  ease  of 
good-fellowship;  the  romantic  worship  of  genius,  the  mark  of 
the  early  nineteenth  century,  perhaps  served  to  justify  an  oracu- 
lar arrogance  of  manner.  But  the  literary  language  of  the  re- 
view essay  could  never  have  established  itself  in  popular  use 
unless  readers  and  writers  alike  had  been  interested  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  themes  which  encouraged,  if  they  did  not  require,  the 
"grey  "  vocabulary  of  generalization,  the  involved  sentence  and 
the  long  paragraph  of  abstract  thought.  Nor  was  this  tendency, 
though  at  first  sight  lamentable,  ultimately  bad.  If  the  result 
was,  on  the  one  hand,  the  formalization  of  style,  and  what 
Coleridge  lamented  as  the  "plebification  of  knowledge,"  it\\ 
meant,  on  the  other,  that  the  thinker's  point  of  view,  as  well  \ 
as  his  vocabulary,  was  introduced  into  the  lives  of  ordinary 
people. 

The  first  strong  impulse  toward  the  creation  of  the  nine- 
teenth-century essay  was  given  by  the  foundation  of  the  great 
reviews.  Of  these,  the  Edinburgh  Review,  begun  in  1802,  was 
the  earliest  and  the  most  important.  Francis  Jeffrey,  Sydney 
Smith  and  Henry  Brougham,  young  Liberals  who  under  the 
strong  Tory  government  of  the  time  had  small  chance  of  ob- 
taining place  or  power,  were  then  living  in  Edinburgh,  and, 
moved  by  a  chance  suggestion  of  Sydney  Smith's,  resolved  one 
memorable  evening  to  found  a  periodical  through  which  they 


5.4-  SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

might  bring  their  ideas  before  the  public.  These  young  writers, 
popularly  recognized  as  scholars  and  gentlemen,  at  once  raised 
the  Edinburgh  Review  above  the  reproach  of  commercial  domi- 
nation under  which  its  predecessors  had  suffered;  and,  dull  as 
their  style  and  argument  may  seem  to  the  modern  reader, 
speedily  made  the  new  journal  a  powerful  organ  for  directing 
opinion.  Its  success  provoked  Gifford  in  1807  to  establish  the 
Quarterly  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  Tories,  and  in  1817  Black- 
wood's was  founded  in  order  more  effectually  to  confute  the 
liberalism  of  the  Edinburgh  and  the  radicalism  of  the  Examiner  r 

The  purpose  and  scope  of  these  publications  is  nowhere 
stated  more  clearly  than  in  the  review  of  the  Edinburgh  which 
appeared  in  1824  in  the  first  number  of  the  Westminster.  James 
Mill,  the  spokesman  of  the  Benthamites,  by  whom  the  West- 
minster was  founded,  called  attention  in  this  article  to  the  im- 
mense power  wielded  by  these  journals,  declaring  that  under 
the  guise  of  reviewing  books  they  had  "  introduced  the  practice 
of  publishing  dissertations  not  only  upon  the  topics  of  the 
day,  but  upon  all  the  most  important  questions  of  morals  and 
legislation  in  the  most  extensive  acceptation  of  the  term." 
The  radical  critic,  however,  admitted  the  widespreading  influ- 
ence of  the  reviews  only  to  deprecate  their  use  of  it,  judging 
orthodox  reviewers  of  both  schools  to  be  but  blind  leaders  of 
public  opinion,  content  to  reflect  and  intensify  the  prejudices 
of  their  own  age  rather  than  to  enlarge  or  to  rectify  its  ideas.1 

Mill's  judgment  was  echoed  nearly  fifty  years  later  by 
Matthew  Arnold,  who  noted  the  significant  fact  that  England, 
while  it  had  organs  for  the  dissemination  of  as  much  truth  as 
might  appeal  to  Catholic,  or  Liberal,  or  Churchman,  had  no 
review  to  aid  those  who  were  bent  on  the  disinterested  search 
for  truth.2  But  this  condition  of  affairs  was  far  more  marked  in 
the  years  immediately  following  the  French  Revolution,  when 
national  prejudices  were  accepted  as  the  only  patriotism,  and 

1  Vol.  i,  p.  206  ff. 

2  "The  Function  of  Criticism,"  Essays  in  Criticism,  First  Series,  ed.  1903, 
pp.  19-20. 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  55 

the  utmost  dream  of  liberalism  reached  little  further  than  a 
change  of  party.  The  early  reviewers  perfectly  embodied  this 
national  spirit  of  reactionary  self-satisfaction :  however  Liberal 
and  Tory  differed  as  to  immediate  policy,  they  agreed  to  as- 
sume as  fundamental  the  existing  codes  and  institutions  of  their 
day.  Regarding  the  English  Constitution,  the  English  Church, 
and  the  traditional  literary  canons  of  England  as  her  bulwarks 
of  righteousness,  they  became,  by  the  very  logic  of  their  narrow 
convictions,  the  bitter  antagonists  of  everything  that  savored 
of  reform,  or  that  was,  however  remotely,  associated  with 
radicalism.  Their  gentlemanly  acceptance  of  the  accepted, 
their  timidity  when  confronted  with  anything  original,  is 
clearly  seen  in  the  field  of  literary  criticism.  The  attacks  on 
Wordsworth  and  Keats  and  Shelley  and  Byron  are  the  most 
familiar  instances  of  their  mistakes  in  judgment.  But  their  at- 
titude toward  these  singers  of  a  dawning  day,  based  as  it  was 
on  a  genuine  belief  that  the  standards  of  poetry  had  been 
fixed  at  some  earlier  time  and  could  no  longer  be  called  in 
question,  is  of  importance  far  less  because  of  the  justice  or 
injustice  of  particular  opinions  than  because  it  was  charac- 
teristic of  a  temper  that  used  knowledge  and  taste  solely  to 
support  existing  views,  and,  in  its  effort  to  prove  the  validity 
of  English  institutions,  turned  the  essay  for  a  time  into  a  su- 
perior sort  of  party-bludgeon. 

The  early  reviewers,  too  deeply  absorbed  in  the  conventions 
of  their  age  to  penetrate  into  its  spirit,  are,  in  spite  of  the  vigor 
of  much  of  their  writing,  singularly  remote  from  us  to-day.  But 
though  they  have  passed,  or  are  passing,  into  the  limbo  of  the 
forgotten,  they  were,  for  evil  and  good,  among  the  shaping 
forces  of  their  century.  On  the  one  hand,  their  timid  conserva- 
tism and  provinciality  of  judgment,  providing  mediocrity  with 
a  formula  for  its  inarticulate  prejudices,  did  hardly  less  to  delay 
general  understanding  of  new  ideas  than  to  discredit  the  poetry 
of  Wordsworth,  Keats,  and  their  fellows.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  elegance  of  Jeffrey,  the  personal  charm  of  Sydney  Smith, 
the  genial  buoyancy  of  John  Wilson,  even  the  savage  vigor  of 


\ 


56    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Gifford,  created  a  literary  tradition  that  gave  dignity  to  English 
periodical  writing. 

The  mantle  of  the  early  reviewers  fell,  moreover,  on  a  suc- 
cessor greater  than  any  of  them:  for  Thomas  Babington  Ma- 
caulay,  perhaps  the  most  brilliant  and  no  doubt  the  most  im- 
mediately influential  of  the  essayists  of  the  century,  was  the 
true  heir  to  their  method  and  point  of  view.  Born  five  years 
later  than  Carlyle  and  six  years  earlier  than  John  Stuart  Mill, 
he  belonged  spiritually  to  the  dominant  class  of  his  time,  whose 
materialism  in  aim  and  exultation  in  great  possessions  seemed 
to  those  clearer  thinkers  fraught  with  gravest  dangers  to  the 
future  of  England.  But  of  the  best  qualities  of  that  class,  —  of 
the  energy  that  made  it  great  in  its  own  sphere  and  of  the 
optimism  that  strengthened  its  faith  in  its  achievements,  — 
he  was  the  chief  representative;  and  though  the  time  has  passed 
when  he  could  be  accounted  a  vital  force  in  the  intellectual 
development  of  his  countrymen,  he  still  gives  consummate  ex- 
pression to  a  view  of  life  which  is  convincing  in  its  vigor  and 
clarity.  The  imaginative  insight  of  the  artist-critic  is  lacking 
in  all  that  he  has  done,  —  in  the  over-loaded  splendor  of  the 
essay  on  Milton  as  in  the  harsh  exaggeration  of  his  judgment 
of  Bacon  or  his  vulgar  insistence  on  the  personal  peculiari- 
ties of  Doctor  Johnson.  Even  in  such  sympathetic  studies 
as  the  essays  on  Addison  and  Madame  D'Arblay,  his  opinions 
are  those  of  the  common  man;  — though  of  the  common  man 
of  enormous  knowledge  and  prodigious  power  of  language. 
His  virtues  are  the  qualities  of  his  defects.  His  ideas  may  be 
those  of  the  reader  rather  than  of  the  observer;  but  his  books 
are  brilliant  with  all  the  richness  of  the  library.  He  may 
achieve  emphasis  rather  than  truth  of  style;  but  he  presents 
his  subject  with  unparalleled  definiteness  and  force.  He  knows 
his  goal  and  reaches  it.  His  pictures  are  unrivaled  in  vividness. 
Though  the  reach  of  his  mind  is  small,  his  grasp  is  absolute  and 
his  technique  unfaltering. 

While  the  reviewers,  early  and  late,  were  glorifying  the  ac- 
cepted view-point  of  their  age,  unauthorized  and  progressive 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  57 

opinions  of  all  sorts  were  seeking  expression  in  the  newly- 
popular  essay-dissertation.  Most  significant  for  weight  of 
matter  and  novelty  of  thought  was  certainly  that  amorphous 
series  of  weekly  essays,  published  by  Coleridge  between  June 
1809  and  March  1810  under  the  title  of  the  Friend,  and  re- 
maining in  itself  and  in  its  associations  one  of  the  curiosities  of 
essay-literature.  With  the  touch  of  the  personal  which  lends 
a  certain  intimate  charm  to  the  ill-fated  periodical,  Coleridge 
confides  to  his  readers  that  he  had  long  been  in  the  habit  of 
daily  noting  down  in  his  "Memorandum  or  Common-place 
Books  both  Incidents  and  Observations,"  and  that  "  the  Number 
of  these  Notices,  and  their  Tendency,  miscellaneous  as  they 
were,  to  one  Common  End"  had  first  encouraged  him  "to  un- 
dertake the  Weekly  Essay"  l  But  neither  a  description  of 
method  that  pointed  toward  essays  of  the  Baconian  type,  nor 
the  association  with  the  Toiler  and  Spectator  implied  in  Cole- 
ridge's modest  disclaimer  of  having  copied  in  the  Friend  the 
"whole  scheme  and  fashion"  of  these  "great  founders  of  the 
race,"  2  can  disguise  the  fact  that  his  rambling  dissertations 
are  essays,  if  at  all,  by  grace  rather  than  by  nature.  He  had, 
indeed,  none  of  the  gifts  of  the  essayist.  As  a  journalist,  he  had 
been  not  unsuccessful,  and  the  Watchman,  undertaken  a  dozen 
years  earlier  to  disseminate  his  Unitarian  doctrines,  shows  how 
persistent  was  his  desire  to  teach  through  the  essay-disserta- 
tion. But  the  thinker  who  from  childhood  had  valued  facts 
only  as  they  led  to  the  abstract  ideas  lying  behind  them,  was 
almost  inevitably  without  a  keen  appreciation  of  the  concrete. 
Nor  did  any  clarifying  sense  of  the  audience  determine  his 
procedure.  He  announced  that  he  would  exclude  from  his  dis- 
cussions all  personal  politics  and  events  of  merely  passing  in- 
terest, and  would  refer  his  readers  directly  to  "Principles  in  all 
things;  in  Literature,  in  the  Fine  Arts,  in  Morals,  in  Legisla- 
ture, in  Religion."  3  The  principles  with  which  he  was  con- 
cerned were,  moreover,  of  the  most  abstruse  and  unfamiliar.  A 
romanticist  by  temperament  and  philosophy,  he  undertook 
1  The  Friend,  ed.  1809-10,  p.  14.  2  Ibid.,  p.  2.  3  Ibid.,  p.  11. 


58    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"to  uphold  those  Truths  and  those  Merits  which  are  founded 
in  the  nobler  and  permanent  Parts  of  our  Nature  against  the 
Caprices  of  Fashion,  and  such  Pleasures,  as  either  depend  on 
transitory  and  accidental  causes,  or  are  pursued  from  less 
worthy  Impulses."  l  The  nobler  and  permanent  truths  that  he 
teaches,  he  finds,  like  his  friend  Wordsworth,  in  the  elementary 
human  experiences  or  in  the  freshly-interpreted  doctrines  of 
an  accepted  religion  and  government;  he  takes  us  to  the  very 
heart  of  his  philosophy,  when  he  declares  that  "whatever 
humbles  the  heart  and  forces  the  mind  inward  ...  in  propor- 
tion as  it  acquaints  us  with  'the  thing  we  are,'  renders  us 
docile  to  concurrent  testimony  of  our  fellowmen  in  all  ages 
and  in  all  nations."  2 

Views  so  alien  to  the  tone  of  current  thought,  either  radical 
or  conservative,  would  have  been  difficult  enough  of  appre- 
hension if  embodied  in  poetry  or  in  informal  and  suggestive 
prose.  But  Coleridge  aimed  at  nothing  less  than  presenting 
them  in  all  the  glory  of  systematic  organization;  he  wished  to 
have  the  various  principles  arranged  in  "their  subordination, 
their  connection,  and  their  application,  in  all  the  divisions  of 
our  duties  and  of  our  pleasures."  3  Weekly  essays  setting  forth 
such  a  philosophy  in  such  a  manner  were  foredoomed  to  failure, 
and  the  learned  and  critical  readers  on  whom  their  author 
relied  for  support  soon  tired  of  the  "effort  of  attention"  4  he 
demanded  of  them.  But  the  essays  of  the  Friend,  with  all 
their  seriousness  and  their  lumbering  search  after  a  system, 
have  the  compelling  power  of  fresh  and  original  thought.  And 
though  they  failed  to  convey  immediately,  even  to  the  lesser 
public  to  whom  Coleridge  ultimately  appealed,  "the  new  world 
of  intellectual  profit"  5  that  he  had  to  offer,  they  form  an  inval- 
uable record  of  the  ideas  coming  in  to  guide,  if  not  to  possess, 
the  following  century.  These  ideas,  presented  far  more  win- 
ningly  by  Coleridge  in  the  wonderful  eloquence  of  his  lectures 
and  monologue-conversations,  were,  in  the  next  two  genera- 

1  The  Friend,  ed.  1809-10,  p.  15.  2  Ibid.,  p.  4. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  25.  4  Ibid.,  p.  5.  6  Ibid.,  p.  328. 


rCP 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  59 

tions,  appropriated  and  developed  by  thinkers  as  diverse  as 
Carlyle,  Newman,  Ruskin,  Mill  and  Arnold.  For  Coleridge, 
though  the  philosopher  of  a  school,  built  on  deeply  human  foun- 
dations and  brought  to  light  truths  that  were  larger  than  the 
creed  of  any  sect.  His  faults  of  method  or  manner,  however 
great,  were  but  the  defects  of  a  vital  thinker  passing  into  new 
realms  and  dealing  with  a  mass  of  still  largely  inchoate  ideas. 
The  immediate  dissemination  of  his  ideas,  in  which  as  an 
essayist  Coleridge  signally  failed,  was  carried  on  by  his  early 
admirer  and  life-long  follower,  Thomas  DeQuincey.  For  this 
work  DeQuincey  was  fitted  both  by  his  intellectual  curiosity 
and  by  his  singular  gift  for  style.  He  was,  too,  in  temperament 
and  character  enough  like  the  older  and  infinitely  greater  man, 
to  become  the  interpreter  of  his  thought.  Both  united,  though 
in  very  different  degrees,  rare  sensitiveness  of  perception  with 
extraordinary  comprehensiveness  of  mind  and  deep  interest 
in  metaphysics;  both  were  genuine  romanticists  in  their  in- 
born mysticism,  their  tender  emotionalism,  and  their  intense 
preoccupation  with  problems  of  the  imagination.  But  while 
Coleridge  was  one  of  the  profoundest  thinkers  of  his  day, 
DeQuincey  was  but  one  of  its  greatest  men  of  letters.  For  the 
greater  part  of  his  life  he  was  an  indefatigable  writer  for  maga- 
zines and  reviews.  Of  his  critical  essays  the  most  characteris- 
tic are  probably  those  that,  like  the  Essay  on  Style,  deal  with 
literary  theory.  Though  their  ideas  are,  in  the  main,  expan- 
sions or  adaptations  of  those  already  familiarized  by  Words- 
worth or  Coleridge  or  the  German  critics  whose  merits  De- 
Quincey so  grudgingly  allows,  and  though  the  development  of 
these  ideas  is  irritatingly  indirect  and  involved,  his  essays 
are  enriched  by  a  wealth  of  allusion  and  invigorated  by  con- 
stant references  to  real  life,  on  which,  in  theory,  he  sets  a  truly 
Wordsworth ian  value.  But  highly  as  DeQuincey  prized  the 
concrete,  his  fidelity  to  fact  was,  in  the  last  issue,  subordinated 
to  fidelity  to  his  own  mood.  Hence  comes  the  touch  of  exag- 
geration everywhere  present  in  his  writing,  whether  in  the 
over-emphasis  of  an  idea,  in  humor  strained  beyond  geniality, 


60    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

in  satire  turned  to  caricature,  or  in  eloquence  that  borders  on 
bombast.  Yet  this  very  predominance  of  mood  over  outer  fact, 
though  it  has  lessened  the  value  of  his  criticism,  has  given  us 
the  Autobiographical  Sketches  and  the  Confessions  of  an  Opium- 
Eater,  the  works  on  which  his  fame  must  ultimately  rest.  In 
the  curious  soul-lore  of  these  studies,  considered  by  their  au- 
thor himself  as  his  one  original  contribution  to  literature, 
living  and  thoughts  about  living  are  inextricably  mingled,  feel- 
ing becomes  art  and  art  is  feeling.  The  mystery  of  suffering, 
the  pathos  of  childish  isolation,  the  beauty  of  kindness,  the 
solemnity  of  death,  —  such  simple  themes  dominate  the  circum- 
stances that  gave  rise  to  them,  and  harmonize  the  various 
strains  of  reality  in  the  key  of  the  central  emotion.  The  at- 
tempt to  analyze  and  appraise  these  imaginative  impressions 
puts  them  at  least  on  the  border-line  of  the  character-essay, 
while  their  emotional,  or  aesthetic  poignancy  lends  to  them 
more  of  the  music  of  poetry  than  of  that  "other  harmony  of 
prose." 

The  informal  essay  of  this  age  is  most  characteristically  re- 
presented in  the  work  of  Charles  Lamb,  who  made  studies  of  the 
men  and  things  around  him  the  instrument  of  a  delicate  self- 
revelation,  to  be  compared  in  its  narrower  sphere  only  with  that 
of  Montaigne.  For  the  Essays  of  Elia,  with  all  their  reserve,  are 
truly  autobiographical,  so  that  the  reader  needs  for  essential 
understanding  of  their  writer,  neither  knowledge  of  his  life  nor 
the  fruitful  commentary  of  his  letters.  Between  his  self -de- 
lineation and  that  of  DeQuincey  there  is  an  immense  distance; 
where  DeQuincey  draws  all  that  he  sees  into  his  own  mood, 
Lamb  looks  disinterestedly  at  the  world  around  him;  where  the 
prose-lyrist  combines  many  strains  into  a  symphonic  theme  of 
emotion,  the  no  less  poetic  essayist  touches  with  the  light  of 
imagination  the  homeliest  incidents  and  the  deeper  moral  and 
spiritual  verities.  His  writings,  like  his  life,  are  founded  on 
realities,  whether  of  everyday  fact  or  of  spiritual  vision.  Poor, 
and  shadowed  by  the  possibility  that  he  might  a  second  time 
fall  a  victim  to  the  insanity  that  pursued  his  sister,  he  neither 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  61 

shrank  from  the  burden  of  family  care  nor  failed  in  the  duties 
of  friendship.  Yet  with  trials  beyond  those  of  his  fellows,  he 
was,  among  them  all,  the  one  who  most  truly  possessed  his  own 
soul.  His  learning,  following  a  somewhat  whimsical  line  of 
personal  inclination,  led  him  to  the  drama  and  poetry  of  an  age 
remote  from  the  strife  of  his  contemporaries.  A  friend  of  many 
of  the  greatest  men  of  his  time,  he  was  as  free  from  pedantry 
in  his  intercourse  with  them  as  he  was  unassuming  toward  the 
commonplace  visitors  who  overran  his  leisure.  His  interest  in 
persons  as  in  books  lay,  indeed,  in  those  quaint  humors  through 
which  individuality  unconsciously  discloses  itself.  And  it  was 
on  his  rare  power  to  see  and  to  portray  the  spiritual  physi- 
ognomy of  people  and  places  that  Charles  Lamb's  power  as  an 
essayist  was  based.  His  field  was  limited  in  the  strictest  sense 
to  the  subjects  he  knew  intimately,  to  his  chosen  haunts  in 
town  or  country,  the  books  he  loved  to  read,  and  the  men  and 
women  with  whom  he  passed  his  days.  This  first-hand  knowl- 
edge gives  substance  and  concreteness  to  all  that  he  wrote. 
The  outlines  of  Elia's  world,  however  delicate  they  may  be, 
are  always  clear;  its  inner  life  is  never  attenuated  by  divorce 
from  outer  fact;  it  is  the  world  of  rashers  of  bacon  and  mugs  of 
beer  as  well  as  of  spiritual  insight  and  moral  heroism,  of  digni- 
fied folios  as  well  as  of  haunting  poetry.  This  double,  or  rather 
this  central  and  inclusive,  point  of  view  makes  Lamb's  essays 
unique  in  artistic  quality.  Their  words  have  a  Shakespearean 
homeliness  as  well  as  a  Shakespearean  reach.  By  a  sort  of  spirit- 
ual felicity,  ordinary  actions  and  events  are  brought  into  the 
region  of  those  deeper  experiences  where  smiles  lie  close  to 
tragedy. 

When  the  Essays  of  Elia  appeared  in  1822,  the  informal 
personal  essay  of  the  nineteenth  century  had  long  taken  def- 
inite shape.  Leigh  Hunt,  nine  years  younger  than  Charles 
Lamb,  had  in  1807,  after  some  unimportant  journalistic  suc- 
cesses, begun  his  career  as  an  essayist  by  contributing  to  the 
Traveller  and  the  Globe  discussions  of  the  acting  and  actors  of 
the  day,  modeled  after  the  Spectator.  This  consideration  of  the 


62    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

actor's  art  was  an  innovation  —  and  a  creative  innovation  — 
in  criticism;  it  both  opened  up  a  new  field  for  the  familiar  essay 
and  furthered  a  more  discriminating  treatment  of  the  thea- 
ter. The  courage,  independence,  and  power  to  communicate 
ideas  that  inspired  these  early  essays  led  Leigh  Hunt,  a  year 
later,  to  join  his  brother  in  setting  up  the  Examiner,  a  paper 
that  aimed  "to  assist  in  producing  Reform  in  Parliament, 
liberality  of  opinion  in  general  (especially  freedom  from  su- 
perstition), and  a  fusion  of  literary  taste  into  all  subjects 
whatsoever."  l 

Famous  as  was  the  struggle  of  the  Examiner  to  bring  about 
reform  in  Parliament  and  a  greater  liberality  in  political  opinion, 
the  paper  is  of  interest  to  the  student  of  the  essay  chiefly  be- 
cause of  its  attempt  to  treat  all  subjects  with  literary  taste. \iff^ 
Among  its  means  to  this  end  were  the  familiar  essays  which  1 ' 
Leigh  Hunt  contributed  to  it  and  in  which  he  may  be  said  \p 
to  have  discovered  his  true  vein.  For  in  spite  of  his  brilliant 
and  courageous  incursion  into  politics,  he  was,  above  all,  the 
man  of  letters,  finding  inspiration  in  books  and  in  an  exquis- 
itely imaginative  world  rather  than  in  real  life.  Between  him- 
self and  the  harsher  realities  of  actual  existence  he  drew  a  veil 
of  optimism,  —  and  then  forgot  what  he  did  not  see.  When 
sentenced  to  the  Surrey  jail  for  libel  in  the  Examiner,  he  had 
the  walls  of  his  room  covered  with  rose-trellised  paper,  its 
ceiling  tinted  with  sky-blue,  and  its  windows  filled  with  birds 
and  flowers;  and  in  that  idyllic  retreat,  with  indomitable  cheer- 
fulness, he  went  on  talking  and  working  for  the  two  years  of 
his  imprisonment. 

To  such  a  temperament,  however  bound  to  the  practical 
world  by  necessity  or  duty,  the  lure  of  past  or  present  lay  pri- 
marily in  its  sentiment.  Leigh  Hunt  is  often  said  to  belong  to 
the  eighteenth  rather  than  to  the  nineteenth  century.  But  in 
truth  he  lived  outside  the  world  of  time  and  place,  seeing  past 
and  present  alike  in  the  alluring  light  of  the  pastoral.  His 
portrayal  of  people  and  places  is  heightened  by  the  emotion 
1  Leigh  Hunt,  Autobiography,  ed.  1860,  vol.  I,  p.  203. 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  63 

through  which  he  sees  them;  their  peculiar  quality  lies  in  what 
might  be  called  their  type-sentiment.  This  quality  appears 
nowhere  more  vividly  than  in  Walks  Home  at  Night,  a  wonder- 
ful composite  picture  of  the  night-life  of  the  city  and  the  natu- 
ral world  encompassing  it.  It  touches  with  its  aesthetic  charm 
essays  reminiscent  in  name  and  subject  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  like  The  Old  Gentleman  and  The  Maid  Servant,  and  ap- 
pears characteristically  in  An  Earth  upon  Heaven,  where  the 
good  things  we  know  and  love  continue  to  be  our  delight  in  a 
world  whose  reality  has  been  purged  of  any  touch  of  pain. 

More  representative  of  his  age  than  any  of  its  essayists,  ex- 
cept the  creator  of  Elia,  was  William  Hazlitt,  a  man  more  con- 
cerned with  facts  and  more  freely  speculative  in  temper  than 
Coleridge  or  DeQuincey,  more  interested  in  political  and  social 
questions  than  Lamb,  and  of  far  greater  energy  and  grasp  of 
mind  than  Leigh  Hunt.  His  first  important  essays  were  con- 
tributed to  the  Examiner,  with  the  general  policy  of  which  he 
was  cordially  in  sympathy.  But  though  he  worked  with  Hunt 
in  the  cause  of  radical  liberalism,  he  was,  in  political  interest 
as  in  private  life,  singularly  isolated  from  any  group  of  his  con- 
temporaries. From  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  Southey,  with 
whom  he  had  felt  the  spiritual  glow  and  ardor  of  Revolutionary 
days,  he  was  inevitably  separated  by  what  in  his  enduring 
radicalism  he  scorned  as  the  recantation  of  those  earlier  leaders 
of  revolt.  His  separation  from  his  own  party  was  hardly  less 
complete;  for,  by  some  strange  freak  of  hero-worship,  he  ac- 
cepted Napoleon  as  the  protagonist  of  democracy,  and  so  was 
himself  by  many  members  considered  one  of  the  betrayers. 
A  born  dissenter,  Hazlitt  was  much  more  than  a  dissenter. 
His  protestantism,  however  mixed  with  egoism,  was  in  part  at 
least  a  passionate  reaction  against  the  narrowness  of  any  sys- 
tem, and  he  had  his  full  share  of  the  true  essayist's  delight  in 
the  world  as  "a  fine  subject  for  speculation."  Nothing  human, 
nothing  that  touches  humanity,  was  foreign  to  his  sympathy, 
and  his  rebellion  against  the  shackles  of  cause  or  creed  left  him 
free  to  expatiate  at  large  over  the  field  of  his  observation.  Yet 


64    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

however  wide  the  range  of  his  speculations,  they  are  peculi- 
arly his  own;  it  is  of  the  essence  of  Hazlitt  to  see  with  his  own 
eyes  and  to  speak  with  his  own  tongue.  Though  before  he  be- 
came a  professional  writer  he  had  devoted  himself  to  the  study 
of  metaphysics  and  political  economy  and  had  been  more  than 
fairly  successful  as  a  painter,  there  is  no  man  of  his  generation 
who  is  less  the  creature  of  the  studio  or  the  library,  who  speaks 
more  directly  from  himself  and  his  own  experience.  Out-of- 
door  life  and  art,  poetry  and  political  economy,  great  men  of 
the  past  and  great  men  of  the  present,  filled  him  with  gen- 
uine enthusiasm,  but  never  awed  him  into  the  tentative  ex- 
pression of  his  opinion.  From  "the  dignified  and  splendid 
savagery"  *  of  the  Letter  to  Gifford  to  "the  mellowed  ani- 
mosity "  2  of  the  Spirit  of  the  Age;  from  the  joy  of  life  that  filled 
him  as  he  walked,  to  the  delight  that  thrilled  him  before  the 
beauty  of  a  picture,  —  everything  that  he  wrote  had  the  vigor 
and  convincingness  of  a  first-hand  impression.  And  the  pas- 
sionate intensity  of  his  nature  made  him  as  eloquent  as  he 
was  direct.  Beside  the  vivid  truth  of  his  words,  DeQuincey's 
long-drawn  harmonies  are  empty,  Macaulay's  magnificence 
vulgar,  Hunt's  sprightly  humor  monotonous.  Only  Lamb  can 
triumphantly  stand  the  test  of  comparison  with  the  nervous, 
sinewy  power  of  his  thought  and  language.3 

These  essayists  were  all  dominated  by  the  intellectual  char- 
acter of  the  first  third  of  their  century,  though  the  lives  of  some 
of  them  extended  considerably  beyond  it.  The  work  of  the  three 
greatest  among  them  —  Hazlitt,  Coleridge,  and  Lamb  —  was 
over  in  1834;  of  the  reviewers,  William  Gifford,  the  oldest, 
died  in  1826,  and  John  Wilson,  the  youngest,  in  1854;  Hunt, 
DeQuincey,  and  Macaulay  lived  until  1859.  Of  their  relations 
to  the  life  of  their  time  it  may  be  said  that  the  reviewers  and 
Macaulay  represented  the  prevailing  opinions  of  the  day;  that 

1  W.  E.  Henley,  Introduction  to  Hazlitt's  Collected  Works,  ed.  1902-4, 
p.  viii. 

2  Augustine  Birrell,  William  Hazlitt,  ed.  1902,  p.  196. 

3  W.  E.  Henley,  supra,  p.  xxv. 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  65 

Coleridge,  followed  at  a  distance  by  DeQuincey,  charted  out 
the  new  romantic  criticism;  that  Hazlitt  and  Hunt  upheld  the 
discredited  doctrines  of  democracy;  and  that  Lamb  sought 
inspiration  in  the  more  permanent  humanities.  But  in  spite 
of  these  differences  they  were  all  in  great  degree  affected  by 
the  reaction  in  the  early  years  of  the  century  against  the  ex- 
cesses of  revolutionary  thought,  and  by  the  divorce  between 
the  world  of  ideas  and  the  world  of  practice  which  accom- 
panied that  reaction. 

The  results  of  this  separation  appear  conspicuously  in  the 
poets  and  essayists  of  the  day.  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge, 
who  had  been  among  the  first  to  herald  the  new  democracy, 
were  content  with  partial  solutions  of  the  problems  of  their  age 
and  failed  to  fulfill  their  early  promise ;  Byron  and  Shelley,  the 
inheritors  of  their  ardor  for  liberty,  suffered  the  condemnation 
of  a  public  true  at  least  to  its  own  prejudices,  and  died  in  alien- 
ation and  exile  from  their  native  land.  The  philosophical 
Coleridge  dealt  only  in  abstractions;  the  practical-minded 
reviewers  had  no  philosophy;  the  enthusiastic  Hunt  was  poor 
in  substance;  the  sturdy  Macaulay  was  without  vision;  the 
free-thinking  Hazlitt  found  his  hero  in  Napoleon;  even  Lamb, 
with  all  his  veracity  and  charm,  cared  little  for  ideas  as  such. 

The  larger  public,  no  less  than  its  literary  spokesmen,  was 
for  a  time  narrowed  and  warped  in  intelligence  by  its  sense  of 
the  hopeless  division  between  theory  and  practical  matters. 
But  in  the  early  thirties  certain  marked  changes  both  in  the 
subjects  and  in  the  method  of  its  thinking  became  evident,  all 
of  them  ultimately  fruitful  for  the  essay.  Curiosity  about  for- 
eign thought  came  to  be  more  general  and  more  intelligent; 
Goethe,  to  Coleridge  the  great  pagan  and  to  DeQuincey  the 
tawdriest  of  intellectual  guides,  began  to  rival  in  influence 
the  Kantian  philosophers  and  Jean  Paul  Richter.  The  reli- 
gious consciousness  was  quickened  to  a  vivid  realization  of 
things  unseen,  as  well  as  to  a  more  general  concern  for  the 
foundations  of  its  faith.  Above  all,  a  deep  interest  was  awaken- 
ing in  the  social  and  moral  conditions  that  were  crying  aloud 


66    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

for  a  remedy.  The  "new  conscience"  of  that  day,  social  rather 
than  religious,  in  spite  of  such  notable  exceptions  as  Keble  and 
Newman,  occupied  itself  primarily  with  the  evils  that  seemed 
to  threaten  the  nation's  life:  with  the  moral  dangers  inherent 
in  England's  material  prosperity,  the  skepticism  undermining 
religious  faith,  the  failure  of  the  state  to  insure  order  or  justice, 
the  lack  of  individuality  or  initiative  in  the  developing  indus- 
trial order.  In  dealing  with  these  questions  thought  became 
more  definite  and  practical,  and  practical  matters  were  in  turn 
treated  with  something  of  a  philosophical  largeness  of  view. 
This  prevailing  absorption  in  social  problems  determined,  for 
a  time  at  least,  the  further  development  of  the  essay.  Some  of 
the  writers  of  yesterday  were  still  in  their  prime;  but  the  ideas 
that  were  to  mould  the  morrow  belonged  to  younger  men,  to 
whom  all  things  again  seemed  possible,  because  to  their  fresh 
vision,  unconsciously  Wordsworthian,  the  England  of  their  day 
offered  the  plastic  material  from  which  might  be  shaped  into 
reality  the  highest  hopes  for  humanity  that  the  past  had  known. 
Thomas  Carlyle,  the  earliest  and  most  widely  influential 
leader  in  this  movement,  was  the  great  student  and  critic 
of  his  generation.  Far-ranging  in  interest,  unwearied  in  in- 
dustry, gifted  with  rare  insight  and  power  of  speech,  he  was 
able  to  carry  on  the  work  of  intellectual  enlightenment  begun 
by  Coleridge  a  generation  earlier  with  a  vividness  and  energy 
that  were  wholly  his  own.  Nor  is  it  easy  to  exaggerate  the 
magnitude  of  this  task.  It  was  to  Carlyle  that  the  England 
of  the  last  century  mainly  owed  its  knowledge  of  Germany; 
that  northern  myth  and  legend  began  to  gain  a  hold  on  the 
popular  imagination;  that  heroes  of  many  ages  and  nations 
became  familiar  friends  of  the  general  reader.  Yet  this  inter- 
pretation of  the  past  was  but  the  beginning  of  Carlyle's  work. 
\  His  deepest  passion  was  to  reveal  to  his  countrymen,  luke- 
warm in  conviction  and  egoistic  in  aim  as  he  held  them  to 
be,  the  spiritual  possibilities  of  the  present.  Of  a  fiery  sin- 
cerity of  soul,  he  cast  away  the  conventions  of  vocabulary  as 
of  creed,  and  appealed,  in  what  might  be  called  a  spirit  of  natu- 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  67 

ral  puritanism,  to  the  more  heroic  elements  of  character.  He 
was  a  man  who,  as  Meredith  says,  "stood  constantly  in  the 
presence  of  those  *  Eternal  verities'  of  which  he  speaks"; J  and 
it  was  with  a  lively  sense  of  the  mystical  forces  that  work  for 
righteousness  that  he  called  on  the  men  of  his  age  to  forget  the 
Byronic  sentimentality  and  crass  materialism  in  which  they 
alternately  reveled,  to  cast  away  the  faded  vestments,  the 
outworn  garments,  of  their  lost  beliefs,  to  put  on  the  armor 
of  a  more  earnest  purpose,  and  to  press  on  to  the  prize  of  a 
social  life  that  would  express  a  present  reality. 

With  a  penetration,  a  moral  fervor,  and  a  sense  of  the  con- 
crete unequaled  in  his  time,  Carlyle  had  neither  the  patience 
nor  the  sanity  of  the  thinker.  The  world  in  which  his  imagina- 
tion lived,  a  world  where  by  some  strange  sleight-of-hand  might 
was  always  right  and  life  was  lived  on  an  heroic  scale,  was  as 
Utopian  as  the  vision  of  any  dreamer,  or  at  most  was  occasion- 
ally related  to  reality  by  marvelous  flashes  of  insight.  But  if 
Carlyle  had  not  the  power  of  seeing  his  world  steadily  and 
whole,  he  penetrated  to  the  very  heart  of  his  material  and  pre- 
sented it  in  a  picture  of  convincing  verisimilitude.  His  mind 
was,  too,  with  all  its  intensity,  an  instrument  of  many  strings; 
he  could  be  as  bitter  a  satirist  as  Swift,  a  preacher  as  impas- 
sioned as  Wyclif ,  a  poet  as  exquisite  in  sensitiveness  as  Shelley. 
It  is  the  union  of  qualities  so  often  mutually  destructive  and 
almost  always  discordant  that  gives  his  essays  the  delicacy  of 
perception  and  the  prophetic  fervor,  the  tenderness  of  sympa- 
thy and  the  power  of  scorn,  the  sense  of  spiritual  reality  and  the 
relentless  painting  of  the  actual  as  he  saw  it,  which  make  up 
their  peculiar  character.  They  are  all,  too,  informed  with  the 
spiritualized  morality  which  is  in  Carlyle's  eyes  the  very  es- 
sence of  living,  and  so,  whatever  their  nominal  subject,  they 
give  expression  to  the  gospel  which  he  believed  could  regen- 
erate England.  He  delights  to  teach  by  example,  but  he 
cannot  refrain  from  pointing  the  moral  of  his  tale.  He  makes  of 
the  character-essay  a  portrait  no  less  individual  than  that  of  a 
1  Letters,  ed.  1912,  vol.  n,  p.  332. 


68    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

hero  of  novel  or  drama;  in  the  historic  portrait  he  presents  the 
type  that  illustrates  and  illumines  his  gospel;  both  together 
form  a  gallery  of  character-pictures  in  which  the  most  diverse 
individuals  —  Mahomet  or  Robert  Burns,  Teufelsdroch  or 
Abbot  Samson  —  are  seen,  if  not  wholly  in  their  habit  as  they 
lived,  yet  with  all  the  self-evident  reality  of  actual  existence. 

The  social  passion  that  made  Carlyle  the  animating  spirit- 
ual force  of  his  generation,  found  as  clear  expression  in  the 
work  of  John  Stuart  Mill.  In  method  the  two  men  were  widely 
different,  Mill  being  as  inevitably  the  logician  and  teacher 
among  the  essayists  of  his  day  as  was  Carlyle  the  preacher-poet. 
Belonging  by  intellectual  descent  to  the  philosophers  and 
economists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  he  accepted  unreservedly 
their  faith  in  freedom,  in  the  power  of  reason,  and  in  the  right 
of  every  individual  to  live  his  own  life.  But  the  tradition  that 
he  inherited,  he  infinitely  widened  and  enriched.  Beginning 
his  career  as  a  writer  by  cooperating  with  his  father  and  Jeremy 
Bentham  in  their  work  as  radical  reformers,  and  accepting  the 
utilitarian  creed  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up  less  as  a 
philosophy  than  as  a  religion,  he  was  yet  able  to  incorporate 
into  his  own  life  and  theory  the  best  thought  of  his  contem- 
poraries, of  whatever  school.  He  was  himself  in  character  and 
temper  the  perfect  exponent  of  that  flexible  and  truth-loving 
spirit  in  which  he  trusted  for  the  improvement  of  mankind.  In 
an  age  when  imagination  and  faith,  the  elementary  duties  and 
the  primitive  emotions,  were  the  popular  watchwords  of  prog- 
ress, he  reasserted  the  place  of  the  intellectual  in  the  moral 
advance  of  mankind. 

Yet  the  permanent  value  of  his  essays  rests  far  less  on  their 
historic  significance  than  on  their  revelation  of  an  extraordi- 
nary personality.  As  clearly  as  even  the  incomparable  Auto- 
biography, they  set  before  our  eyes  Mill's  disinterestedness, 
his  emotional  and  aesthetic  sensitiveness  to  ideas,  his  patient 
zeal  for  truth.  Lacking  in  the  intimacy  of  Montaigne,  the 
courteous  ease  of  Addison  and  Goldsmith,  the  fervor  of  Carlyle, 
the  delicacy  of  Charles  Lamb,  they  are  yet  marked  by  a  truly 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  69 

philosophic  breadth  of  view  and  integrity  of  judgment.  Mill's 
appeal  is  to  the  intellect  of  men,  not  to  their  prejudices  or 
emotions,  and  his  undoubted  power  as  a  teacher  lies  in  the 
cultivation  of  that  rightmindedness  and  devotion  to  truth 
which  is  the  distinctive  quality  of  his  own  thought.  Without 
the  virtues  or  vices  of  passion,  he  reached  a  relatively  small 
audience;  but  those  whom  he  touched  he  inspired  to  a  funda- 
mental and  progressive  intellectual  activity. 

Mill's  style  is,  from  inner  necessity,  at  the  furthest  possible 
remove  from  that  of  Carlyle :  where  one  is  forceful  and  abrupt, 
picturesque  and  thrilling,  the  other  is  lucid,  firm  and  flexible; 
while  one  is  essentially  poetic,  the  other  is  typically  prosaic,  in 
that  it  lends  itself  with  absolute  fidelity  to  the  expression  of 
every  shading  and  modulation  of  thought.   Carlyle's  best  leg- 
acy is  the  picture  or  phrase  that  touches  the  heart  to  resolu- 
tion, Mill's  the  formulation  of  principles  that  lie  at  the  root  of 
social  justice,  or  the  presentation  of  truths  that  are  the  foun- 
dation of  individual  morality.    But  the  differences  between 
the  two  men,  whether  in  style  or  character,  did  not  conceal 
,  from  them  their  essential  sympathy :  Carlyle  early  recognized 
1  Mill  as  a  brother  mystic;  Mill  was  throughout  his  life  con- 
1  vinced  that  Carlyle  reached  the  ends  he  himself  sought,  by 
swifter  ways  than  those  of  logic.1  And,  in  fact,  the  affiliations 
;  connecting  them  were  more  significant  than  the  differences  in 
'  their  complementary  approach  to  the  problems  of  their  age. 
Carlyle's  trumpet-call  to  righteousness  was  like  the  words  in 
;  which  he  spoke,  personal,  enigmatic,  spiritually  illuminating 
even  when  intellectually  baffling;  Mill's  gospel  belonged  in 
thought  and  language  to  the  newer  dispensation  of  reason.  But 
though  the  one  saw  behind  the  facts  the  ever-mysterious 
Immensities  and  Veracities,  the  other  the  laws  of  justice  and 
humanity  that  we  are  slowly  spelling  out,  the  two  were  at  one, 
not  only  in  truth  to  their  differing  visions  of  reality,  but  in  their 
'large  perception  of  the  ends  toward  which  progress  moves. 
v  In  the  vast  extension  of  essay-writing  in  the  second  half  of 
1  J.  S.  Mill,  Autobiography,  ed.  1887,  pp.  175-6. 


70    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  nineteenth  century,  the  essay  of  literary  criticism  easily 
held  its  own.  Indeed  so  general  was  its  use  that  its  history 
during  those  years  would  almost  resolve  itself  into  that  of  the 
literary  scholarship  and  appreciation  of  the  age.  Through  it 
Swinburne  hurled  his  thunderbolts  of  eulogy  or  of  scorn,  and 
Andrew  Lang  made  it  echo  of  far-off  days;  in  it  Stevenson  paid 
his  tribute  to  romance,  Meredith  discussed  the  function  of  the 
comic  spirit,  John  Richard  Green  and  Leslie  Stephen  inter- 
preted the  historic  and  philosophic  relationships  of  literature, 
Austin  Dobson  painted  vignettes  of  the  courtly  centuries,  and 
John  Morley  shed  over  the  same  periods  the  light  of  the  moral 
humanities.  But  among  the  poets  and  scholars,  the  thinkers 
and  statesmen  who  during  these  years  used  the  essay  for  their 
various  purposes,  Matthew  Arnold  and  Walter  Pater  stand,  if 
not  supreme,  preeminent  for  their  wide  range  of  subject-matter 
and  their  grasp  of  critical  problems.  Alike  in  disinterestedness 
of  aim,  breadth  of  scholarship  and  delicacy  of  discrimination, 
they  were  yet  strikingly  different  in  their  literary  affiliations 
and  in  their  temperaments.  Both  writers  included  in  the  critic's 
work  the  dissemination  of  fresh  material  for  thought,  the  cul- 
tivation in  his  readers  of  intellectual  flexibility  and  artistic 
sensitiveness.  But  Arnold,  the  true  son  of  Thomas  Arnold  of 
Rugby,  stressed  the  social  element  in  this  conception :  he  dwelt 
on  the  need  of  propagating  knowledge  as  well  as  of  knowing; 
would  reform  society  by  a  culture  that  makes  impossible  its 
rigid  limitations  of  mind  and  spirit.  Pater,  with  the  instinct  of 
the  romantic  psychologist,  turned  rather  to  the  study  of  the 
individual  and  that  of  the  race,  tracing  the  aesthetic  perception 
through  its  curious  transformations,  or  emphasizing  its  value 
as  an  element  in  experience.  Arnold's  conviction  that  the  ulti- 
mate function  of  criticism  is  to  further  public  intelligence  and 
morality  inevitably  associated  him  with  the  forces  working, 
especially  through  education,  for  better  daily  living;  Pater's 
intuitive  understanding  of  the  more  elusive  phases  of  spiritual 
development  attracted  him  irresistibly  to  those  transitional 
periods  in  personal  and  national  life  in  which  new  ideas  and 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  71 

aspirations  were  beginning  to  define  themselves,  and  made  him 
their  unequaled  interpreter.  Arnold,  by  descent  a  Liberal, 
turned  from  the  religious  half-way  house  of  his  generation  as 
resolutely  as  did  Cardinal  Newman,  and,  notwithstanding  his 
faith  in  the  "power,  not  ourselves,  which  makes  for  righteous- 
ness," stood  firmly  with  the  rationalists;  Pater,  skeptical  in 
temperament,  yet  with  a  strong  bent  toward  mysticism,  and 
a  distinctly  religious  up-bringing,  found  the  embodiment  of 
his  aesthetic-religious  aspirations  in  the  rites  and  ceremonies  of 
the  English  Church.  An  inflexible  honesty  of  thought  ruled 
Arnold's  delicate  perceptions,  a  rare  sensitiveness  constantly 
enriched  and  refined  Pater's.  But  Arnold  appreciated  the 
subtle  play  of  religious  feeling  in  the  hymns  of  St.  Francis  and 
the  asceticism  of  Eugenie  de  Guerin,  as  Pater  recognized  the 
intellectual  element,  the  "scholarship,"  in  Raphael  or  Prosper 
Merimee.  Fortunate  in  their  escape  from  the  narrowing  preju- 
dices of  the  early  years  of  the  century,  the  two  together  gave 
expression  in  typically  individual  forms  to  the  best  critical 
spirit  of  their  age.  Arnold,  though  a  poet,  was  primarily  the 
thinker  and  judge;  Pater,  born  a  critic,  was  nevertheless  the 
artist  in  his  desire  to  body  forth  his  idea.  The  most  character- 
istic work  of  the  one  was  his  analysis  of  the  function  of  art  and 
criticism  in  modern  society,  of  the  other  a  series  of  imaginary 
portraits  that  throw  light  on  the  aesthetic  and  spiritual  develop- 
ment of  the  race. 

While  the  literary  essay  has  in  recent  years  held  a  high  place, 
it  has  been  relatively  much  less  important  than  in  the  days  of 
Dryden  or  Jeffrey,  or  even  in  those  of  Carlyle.  With  the  more 
diversified  interests  of  a  wider  reading-public,  new  subjects 
have  been  dealt  with  in  the  essay,  and  old  ones  have  been 
treated  with  infinitely  greater  variety.  Modern  scientific  dis- 
coveries and  the  bearing  of  science  on  practical  matters  have 
together  resulted  in  a  vast  output  of  essays,  of  which  Huxley's 
are  perhaps  the  most  brilliant  examples,  that  bring  some  por- 
tion of  the  knowledge  of  the  investigator  to  the  readers  of  news- 
papers and  magazines.  The  interest  in  social  questions,  become 


72    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

a  moving  force  in  the  generation  of  Carlyle  and  Mill  and  infi- 
nitely deepened  by  Ruskin's  appeal  to  the  public  conscience, 
has  increased  with  every  decade,  until  there  is  to-day  a  whole 
literature  of  essays  dealing  with  social  conditions,  their  evils 
and  their  remedies.  The  love  of  nature,  stimulated  by  the 
poetry  of  the  early  nineteenth  century  and  already  appearing 
in  the  essays  of  its  early  years,  has  created  for  us  such  later 
records  of  days  in  wood  and  field  as  those  of  Burroughs  and 
Jefferies.  Character-study  and  the  more  intimate  personal 
experiences  have,  since  the  time  of  Stevenson,  given  subject- 
matter  for  such  informal  essays  as  those  of  Alice  Meynell  and 
John  Galsworthy. 

But  any  attempt  to  classify  the  essays  of  our  time  is  futile, 
since  the  range  of  their  subjects  is  hardly  less  wide  than  the 
interests  of  the  age.  For  the  essay  has  practically  ceased  to  be 
the  peculiar  tool  of  the  writing  class,  and  is  passing  into  the 
hands  of  every  intelligent  worker  who  wishes  to  transmit 
knowledge  of  any  kind  to  his  fellows.  The  essay-readers  of  a 
century  ago  are,  in  fact,  the  essay-writers  of  to-day,  and  in 
their  use  of  this  most  flexible  of  literary  forms  for  virtually 
every  purpose  the  essay  is  at  length  becoming  a  truly  popular 
medium  of  communication. 

The  intimate  connection  of  the  essay  with  the  daily  life  of 
our  time  is  best  understood  when  viewed  as  the  outcome  of  its 
earlier  history.  Critical  and  tentative  in  nature,  it  came  into 
being  only  when  the  skeptical,  experimental  spirit  first  plainly 
declared  itself.  Montaigne  and  Bacon,  with  their  less  illustri- 
ous co-workers  in  the  closing  years  of  the  Renaissance,  were  in 
a  very  real  sense  "the  first  of  the  moderns,"  inasmuch  as  they 
formulated  the  rational  philosophy  of  life  which  underlies  all 
our  later  progress.  After  their  work  of  creation  came  a  pause  of 
almost  two  generations  before  Dry  den  and  his  compeers,  by 
using  the  essay  for  the  discussion  of  literary  questions,  widened 
the  range  of  its  subject-matter  and  showed  more  clearly  the 
compass  of  its  intellectual  and  artistic  possibilities.  On  this 
new  development  followed  in  the  early  eighteenth  century  the 


THE   ENGLISH   ESSAY  73 

second  stage  of  its  popularization,  the  elementary  treatment 
of  all  sorts  of  subjects  in  the  periodical  essay.  The  excellence 
of  style  and  the  wide  popular  appeal  of  this  form  of  the  essay 
established  it  almost  immediately  in  general  use;  and  for  three 
quarters  of  a  century,  while  the  world  was  changing  around 
it,  it  preserved  the  traditions  of  England's  great  age  of  prose 
and  reason.  In  the  years  following  the  French  Revolution  the 
essay  entered  on  a  new  period  of  its  history,  but  a  period  which  <* 
had,  in  fact,  been  long  preparing.  The  great  reviews  and  the 
unparalleled  growth  of  journalism  gave  writers  their  first 
opportunity  for  bringing  home  their  ideas  to  a  large  circle  of 
general  readers,  who,  however  diverse  in  tastes  and  interests, 
were  alike  in  a  habit  of  reading  and  in  a  facile  intellectual 
curiosity. 

The  essay,  responding  throughout  its  whole  history  to  the 
demands  of  its  readers,  has  marked  the  growth  of  the  demo- 
cratic spirit  in  literature  hardly  less  clearly  than  the  popular 
advance  to  a  scientific,  or  rational,  point  of  view.  A  passion 
for  understanding  himself  and  his  experiences  led  Montaigne 
to  a  deep  sense  of  fellowship  with  his  kind.  Bacon  desired 
knowledge  no  more  ardently  than  he  sought  to  apply  it  to  the 
ends  of  human  happiness.  A  public  eager  for  instruction,  and 
united  in  national  and  social  enthusiasm,  was  the  condition  of 
the  popular  development  of  the  essay  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury; widespread  interest  in  social,  literary  and  scientific  ques- 
tions accounts  in  great  part  for  its  phenomenal  expansion  in 
the  last  one  hundred  years.  Nor  has  the  society  to  whose  needs 
the  essay  has  shaped  itself  been  the  mere  passive  recipient  of 
ideas;  it  has  appropriated  the  art  through  which  it  has  learned, 
and  made  this  art  one  of  its  most  useful  instruments. 

Recognition  of  the  constantly  extending  practical  uses  of  the 
essay  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that,  however  serviceable, 
it  is  yet  an  art-form,  and  as  such  its  wider  adoption  must  tend 
to  increase  the  capacity  both  of  writers  and  of  readers  to 
appreciate  and  to  create  literary  art.  John  Stuart  Mill  traced 
the  influence  of  Wordsworth  over  his  own  logical  mind  to  a 


74    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

certain  prosaic  quality  in  the  poet  that  enabled  the  reasoner 
to  find  common  ground  with  him.  In  some  such  manner  the 
essay,  the  typically  prosaic  art-form,  gives  natural  expression 
to  an  age  preeminently  practical  and  rational.  But  even  as  it 
fulfills  the  needs  of  the  practically  minded,  it  strengthens  the 
art-impulses  of  those  who  use  it,  and  so  does  much  to  stimulate 
the  development  of  the  more  purely  imaginative  sensibilities 
and  powers. 


THE  ENGLAND 
OF  GEORGE  CRABBE 


THE  ENGLAND 
OF  GEORGE  CRABBE 

George  Crabbe  stands  peculiarly  alone  in  his  generation. 
While  his  fellow  poets,  older  and  younger,  were  stirred  to 
speculation  and  sentiment,  he  kept  his  eye  fixed  on  the  people 
and  things  around  him;  while  they  sang  of  nature  and  the  soul 
of  man,  he  painted  pictures  of  the  England  in  which  he  was  liv- 
ing. The  ideas  that  inspired  his  contemporaries  were  in  consid- 
erable measure  divorced  from  the  conditions  of  actual  life :  the 
characters  they  created  were  largely  the  creatures  of  mood  or 
theory;  the  world  they  fashioned,  however  informed  by  ideas 
and  suffused  by  emotion,  was  relatively  unsubstantial,  limited 
in  the  elements  of  human  experience.  Alike  over  the  half-way 
house  where  Wordsworth,  the  sturdiest  realist  of  them  all,  rec- 
onciled the  spiritual  life  of  the  philosopher-poet  with  the 
laborious  days  of  the  peasant-shepherd;  over  the  "beautiful 
idealisms  of  moral  excellence"  through  which  Shelley  would 
conquer  suffering  and  wrong;  over  the  demand  of  the  super- 
man for  self-realization  into  which  Byron  translated  the  dem- 
ocratic ideal  of  his  day,  hangs  the  glamour  of  romance,  the 
illusive  light  of  a  world  in  which  neither  circumstance  nor  char- 
acter is  weighted  with  everyday  reality. 

But  Crabbe's  world  is  of  the  very  stuff  of  our  daily  existence; 
he  knows  no  people  who  have  not  truly  lived,  recognizes  no 
philosophy  that  has  not  long  been  a  part  of  men's  daily  thought. 
Hazlitt,  himself  of  the  generation  which  felt  to  the  full  the 
charms  of  the  poetry  of  romance,  said  in  The  Spirit  of  the  Age 
that  Crabbe's  wide  popularity  could  "be  accounted  for  on  no 
other  principle  than  the  strong  ties  that  bind  us  to  the  world 
about  us,  and  our  involuntary  yearnings  after  whatever  in  any 
manner  powerfully  and  directly  reminds  us  of  it."  l    Crabbe's 

1  "Mr.  Campbell  and  Mr.  Crabbe,"  The  Spirit  of  ike  Age,  Collected  Works, 
ed.  1902^*,  vol.  iv,  p.  348. 


78    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

portrayal  of  the  people  among  whom  he  dwelt,  and  the  scenes 
with  which  he  was  familiar,  gives  us  the  very  lineaments  of  the 
England  of  his  day.  His  poetry  is  rich  in  incident  and  full  of 
men  and  things;  in  its  emphasis  on  character  and  action  it  is 
akin  to  the  novel  rather  than  to  the  song.  In  it  the  poor,  the 
outcast,  the  workers  of  that  middle  class  which  was  to  rule  the 
destinies  of  the  next  century,  appeared  for  the  first  time  in 
their  fashion  as  they  lived,  and  by  the  very  realism  of  their 
garb  and  accent  added  to  the  theoretic  recognition  of  men's 
rights  and  the  mystical  perception  of  human  unity  which  in- 
spired the  poetry  of  the  Revolution,  an  understanding  of  actual 
life  so  inclusive  that  none  of  its  experiences  could  remain  out- 
side the  pale  of  knowledge  and  of  sympathy. 

Yet  Crabbe's  poetry,  though  it  stood  alone  in  its  age,  was 
intimately  related  to  the  main  lines  of  advance  in  the  eight- 
eenth century.  The  predominating  interest  of  that  time  was 
social.  The  literature  of  the  day  was  permeated  by  a  double 
enthusiasm,  —  for  man  as  a  social  being  and  for  society  as 
making  possible  man's  rational  development.  Pope  was  not,  it 
is  true,  the  first  to  consider  man  the  proper  study  of  mankind; 
but  his  famous  line  aptly  epitomized  the  spirit  of  his  contem- 
poraries, who  considered  the  mysteries  of  the  universe  chiefly 
in  their  bearings  on  human  life,  and  found  in  the  rational  order- 
ing of  society  a  primary  motive  to  action.  The  aspects  of  experi- 
ence which  the  writers  of  the  Enlightenment  emphasized  were, 
accordingly,  neither  the  reach  of  individual  capacity  nor  the 
ecstasy  of  mystic  vision,  but  the  inter-relationships  and  mutual 
responsibilities  of  beings  living  together  in  society .  Pope  himself 
sought  the  explanation  of  evil,  not  in  the  wickedness  of  the 
sufferer  nor  in  the  righteous  will  of  Omnipotence,  but  in  the 
good  of  that  larger  whole  to  which  all  individual  interests  must 
be  subordinated  and  with  which  all  individual  happiness  is  ulti- 
mately identical.  Shaftesbury  brought  religion  to  the  test  of 
human  experience  by  applying  to  the  idea  of  God  the  highest 
standards  of  human  morality:  those  ideas  of  justice  and  good- 
ness and  truth  on  conformity  with  which  the  virtue  even  of  the 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    79 

Divine  Being  must  depend.  Addison  and  Steele,  avowing  their 
purpose  to  bring  knowledge  to  the  ignorant  and  to  make  kind- 
liness and  urbanity  the  universal  rule  of  life,  are  perhaps  the 
best  exponents  of  the  characteristic  ethical  feeling  of  the  age. 
Swift,  pessimist  and  cynic  though  he  was,  struck  a  note  of  deep 
humanity  in  his  denunciations  alike  of  the  condition  of  Ireland 
and  of  the  vanity  and  brutality  of  mankind. 

Closely  associated  with  this  concentration  of  attention  upon 
man  in  his  social  relations  was  a  wide-spread  interest  in  every- 
day experience  which  gave  motive  and  material  to  poets  and 
thinkers  as  well  as  to  the  first  great  novelists.  Even  Words- 
worth allowed  Pope  the  gift  of  first-hand  observation.  The 
foibles  noted  in  the  Spectator  are  photographic  in  their  accu- 
racy. Defoe  responded  to  a  demand  of  the  reading-public  when 
he  transformed  the  romance  of  roguery  into  the  novel  of  char- 
acter by  his  minute  portrayal  of  circumstance  and  personality. 
A  new  and  peculiarly  modern  realism  appeared  very  early  in 
the  work  of  the  nature-poets.  In  The  Seasons  the  natural 
beauty  of  the  country  is  enhanced  by  pictures  of  real  hay- 
makers and  sheep-shearers;  the  severity  of  the  winter  storm 
drives  the  slender-footed  robin  to  seek  a  refuge  by  the  farmer's 
hospitable  fireside.  Shenstone's  Schoolmistress  is  as  vividly 
described  as  is  her  "plodding  pattern,"  the  mother-hen;  and 
the  defiant  victim  of  the  birchen  rod  and  his  terror-stricken 
little  sister  are  real  children  though  they  live  in  an  idyllic 
world. 

In  spite  of  these  exquisite  touches  of  reality,  human  life  as 
presented  in  the  poetry  of  the  early  eighteenth  century  is  still 
so  remote  from  daily  experience  that  it  quickly  recedes  into 
the  distance  of  decorative  art.  As  travel  became  more  general, 
however,  and  knowledge  of  the  country  more  intimate,  a  deep- 
ening sympathy  appeared  in  the  poetic  treatment  of  its  peo- 
ple. Gray,  musing  in  the  country  churchyard,  felt  his  human 
kinship  with  the  lowly,  in  face  of  the  great  equality  of  death; 
Goldsmith,  in  his  lament  over  the  miseries  of  the  Deserted 
Village,  indulged  in  a  genuine  as  well  as  a  luxuriously  senti- 


80    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

mental  tear;  and  finally,  Burns  and  Blake,  one  three  and  one 
five  years  younger  than  Crabbe,  found  their  chief  inspira- 
tion in  the  lives  of  the  poor  among  whom  they  had  grown  up 
and  whom  they  both  intimately  knew.  But  the  aspects  of  the 
life  of  poverty  revealed  in  their  verse  were  widely  different  from 
those  pictured  by  Crabbe.  Burns,  primarily  a  singer,  discov- 
ered the  lyric  beauty  of  peasant-poetry  and  transformed  the 
conventional  pastoral  into  the  idyll  of  real  life;  Blake,  perhaps 
the  most  mystical  of  English  poets,  saw  everyday  experience 
as  symbol  rather  than  as  fact. 

But  Crabbe,  infinitely  less  poetic  than  either  of  these  con- 
temporaries of  his,  scrutinized  the  life  that  inspired  them  to 
song  with  the  keenness  at  once  of  the  novelist  and  the  scientist. 
What  education  he  had  was  that  of  a  surgeon,  and  from  his 
youth  up  he  was  an  indefatigable  student  of  botany  and  ento- 
mology. He  thus  brought  to  the  study  of  people  the  habits  of 
the  naturalist.  Critics  are  fond  of  saying  that  he  learned  to 
know  them  as  he  knew  the  fauna  and  flora  of  his  country; 
that  he  classified  them  as  he  classified  his  beetles.  To  a  rare 
natural  power  of  observation,  developed  both  by  opportunity 
and  by  training,  he  owed  his  peculiar  quality  as  a  poet.  As  his 
experience  broadened  he  greatly  enlarged  the  field  of  his  art; 
the  villagers  were  followed  by  the  citizens  of  the  Borough,  his 
poor  parishioners  by  the  well-to-do  Englishmen  of  the  Tales. 
But  he  never  swerved  either  from  his  early  habit  of  observa- 
tion or  from  his  early  purpose  to  picture  the  world  as  he  saw  it, 

"As  Truth  will  paint  it,  and  as  Bards  will  not."  1 

Hazlitt  complained  that  he  wrote  about  the  country  and  coun- 
try life  "only  to  take  the  charm  out  of  it,  and  to  dispel  the  illu- 
sion, the  glory,  and  the  dream,  which  have  hovered  over  it  in 
golden  verse  from  Theocritus  to  Cowper."  2  But  Crabbe,  feel- 
ing the  deep  significance  of  the  most  commonplace  character, 

1  The  Village,  I,  54. 

2  "  Mr.  Campbell  and  Mr.  Crabbe,"  The  Spirit  of  the  Age,  Collected  Works, 
ed.  1902-4,  iv,  p.  351.  J 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    81 

found  the  romance  or  tragedy  of  the  fairest  illusion  pale  beside 
it;  the  glory  and  the  dream  that  for  a  Rousseau  or  a  Maeterlinck 
hover  over  a  society  where  vice  and  the  wrongs  done  by  man 
to  man  will  have  vanished,  he  saw  in  the  daily  life  of  men  who 
struggled,  and  often  vainly,  against  heavy  odds  of  circumstance. 
It  is  no  accident  that  he  is  oftenest  compared  with  Shakespeare 
or  Balzac  or  Meredith,  writers  who  found  the  ideal,  if  at  all,  in 
and  through  the  actual.  His  horizon  may  be  narrower  than 
theirs,  but  the  people  he  creates,  or  interprets,  live  with  those 
of  the  greater  masters  in  right  of  their  genuine  and  substantial 
humanity. 

The  leisure  of  mind  that  enabled  Crabbe  to  become  the  great 
character-student  among  his  contemporaries  was  bought  at  the 
price  of  an  almost  entire  aloofness  from  the  main  intellectual 
currents  of  the  time.  He  had  apparently  no  interest  in  the  spec- 
ulative activity  that  was  moving  radical  and  conservative  alike 
to  seek  out  a  social  philosophy  more  adequate  to  new  condi- 
tions; "was  as  indifferent  as  a  good  old-fashioned  clergyman 
could  very  well  be  to  the  existence  of  any  new  order  of  ideas  in 
the  world."  1  His  first  important  poems  were  published  eight 
years  before  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  his 
last,  four  years  after  the  fall  of  Napoleon;  he  was  welcomed 
to  the  friendship  of  Burke  and  Johnson  and  might  easily  have 
read  Tennyson's  Early  Poems  and  Ebenezer  Elliott's  Corn-Law 
Rhymes.  Yet  it  would  seem  that  he  was  little  moved  by  the 
events  that  changed  the  face  of  Europe  while  he  pursued  the 
even  course  of  his  life  as  a  clergyman.  He  rejoiced  with  all  lov- 
ers of  freedom  at  the  fall  of  the  Bastille,  and  gloried  in  Eng- 
land's final  victory  over  Napoleon;  but  a  certain  sober  good 
sense  and  fair-mindedness  kept  him,  in  the  midst  of  the  passion- 
ate excesses  of  the  years  following  the  Revolution,  free  from  the 
contagion  of  prejudice  and  party.  From  the  beginning,  though 
bound  to  him  by  ties  of  deepest  gratitude,  he  saw  the  weakness 
of  Burke's  ultra-conservatism,  and,  true  throughout  his  life  to 

1  Sir  Leslie  Stephen,  "Crabbe's  Poetry,"  Hours  in  a  Library,  Second  Series, 
ed.  1881,  pp.  286-7. 


82    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

his  principle  that  sometimes  one  party  was  right  and  sometimes 
the  other,  he  gave  his  vote  to  Whig  or  Tory  according  to  his 
judgment  of  the  particular  question.1 

After  the  publication  of  The  Newspaper  in  1785,  Crabbe  was 
silent  for  twenty-two  years;  but,  though  his  personal  experience 
had  widened  greatly  in  that  long  interval,  The  Parish  Register  }A 
and  the  poems  that  followed  it  showed  no  change  in  his  position ' 
as  a  thinker.  As  a  poet  he  was  deeply  moved  only  by  the  con- 
crete, even  such  semi-speculative  subjects  as  religion  and 
patriotism  lying  outside  his  range.  In  his  preface  to  the  poems 
of  1807  he  tells  us  that,  after  weighing  the  claims  of  religious 
and  national  poetry,  and  after  many  vain  efforts  to  write  on 
these  high  themes,  he  had  given  up  the  attempt  from  a  con- 
viction of  his  own  unfitness  for  the  task.2 

But  though  Crabbe  was  singularly  indifferent  to  the  theories, 
political  or  philosophic  or  social,  that  interested  his  contempo- 
raries of  all  schools,  and  though  his  isolation  from  the  main 
currents  of  thought  in  his  time  gave  more  than  a  touch  of  pro- 
vinciality to  almost  everything  he  wrote,  we  can  hardly  regret 
an  indifference  that  left  him  leisure  to  be  himself.  Meredith 
says  in  The  Amazing  Marriage  that  "men  and  women  grow  to 
their  dimensions"  only  when  human  events,  things  concern- 
ing you  and  me,  instead  of  the  "deafening  catastrophes  now 
afflicting  and  taking  all  conversation  out  of  us/'  form  the 
staple  of  thought  and  talk.3  Certainly  Crabbe's  freedom  from 
a  too  absorbing  interest  in  the  ideas  that  were  already  shaping 
the  future  made  it  possible  for  him  to  study  the  distinctly  human 
aspects  of  his  own  age  and  to  picture  those  qualities  of  char- 
acter and  circumstance  that  were  at  once  the  outcome  of  past 
conditions  and  the  material  with  which  the  future  was  to  deal. 

Although  by  temperament  and  training  Crabbe  was  little 
affected  by  theories,  he  was  brought  from  his  earliest  infancy 
into  close  contact  with  the  elementary  realities  of  existence. 

1  R.  Huchon,  George  Crabbe  and  His  Times,  tr.  Frederick  Clarke,  ed.  1907, 
p.  454. 

2  Ed.  1905,  vol.  i,  pp.  96-7.  »  Ed.  1909,  pp.  30-1. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   83 

It  is,  indeed,  impossible  to  overestimate  the  influence  of  the 
surroundings  of  his  childhood  in  defining  the  quality  of  his 
poetry,  of  which  his  experience,  early  and  late,  forms  warp 
and  woof.  He  was  born  in  Aldborough,  a  forlorn  seaport 
and  fishing  village  on  the  coast  of  Suffolk,  and  from  the  hard- 
ships of  his  own  youth  learned  to  know  to  the  full  the  misery 
that  has  ever  been  the  birthright  of  hopeless  poverty.  Ald- 
borough is  the  original  of  The  Village,  and  the  reader  of  the 
poems  has  little  need  of  biographer  or  antiquarian  to  picture 
the  straggling  hamlet,  hemmed  in  on  one  side  by  the  sea  and  on 
the  other  by  scowling  fields.  The  house  in  which  he  lived  as  a 
boy,  destroyed  by  the  waves  before  he  reached  manhood,  was, 
according  to  all  testimony,  a  low  cottage  with  one  or  two  rooms 
on  the  ground-floor  and  bedrooms  under  the  thatched  roof 
above.  If  the  poet  himself  did  not  in  his  early  years  want  for 
food  and  warmth,  he  at  least  saw  in  the  homes  of  his  neighbors 
"the  misery  of  a  stinted  meal,"  the  cheerless  discomfort  of  the 
unlighted  hearth,  the  griefs  of  stricken  families,  who,  robbed  of 
their  all  by  the  sea,  begged  "a  poor  protection  from  the  poor." l 
For  the  inhabitants  of  Aldborough  —  or  the  Village  —  were 
never  free  from  the  terror  of  the  ocean,  advancing  steadily  on 
their  ever-lessening  shore,  — 

"Till  some  fierce  tide,  with  more  imperious  sway, 
Sweeps  the  low  hut  and  all  it  holds  away."  2 

Scarcely  less  terrible,  and  even  more  forbidding,  than  the 
encroaching  sea  was  the  barren,  marshy  country  that  lay  above 
and  behind  the  fishing  hamlet.  What  beauty  it  had  was  the 
beauty  of  desolation.  If  we  may  judge  from  Crabbe's  persistent 
descriptions  of  it,  its  somber  harshness  impressed  him  even 
more  deeply  than  the  sullen  terror  of  the  ocean.  Its  spirit  and 
features  appear  and  reappear  in  his  poems;  he  is  thought  to 
refer  to  it  when  in  later  years  he  writes :  — 

"My  own  sad  world,  where  I  had  never  seen 
The  earth  productive,  or  the  sky  serene. " 3 

1  The  Village,  i,  169,  179,  130.  2  jfo^  lf  127-8. 

3  Posthumous  Tales,  xxn,  195-6. 


84    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

From  it  he   drew  the  picture  so  familiar  to  readers  of  The 
Village  :  — 

"Lo!  where  the  heath,  with  withering  brake  grown  o'er, 
Lends  the  light  turf  that  warms  the  neighboring  poor; 
From  thence  a  length  of  burning  sand  appears, 
Where  the  thin  harvest  waves  its  wither 'd  ears; 
Rank  weeds,  that  every  art  and  care  defy, 
Reign  o'er  the  land,  and  rob  the  blighted  rye: 
There  thistles  stretch  their  prickly  arms  afar, 
And  to  the  ragged  infant  threaten  war; 
There  poppies,  nodding,  mock  the  hope  of  toil; 
There  the  blue  bugloss  paints  the  sterile  soil; 
Hardy  and  high,  above  the  slender  sheaf, 
The  slimy  mallow  waves  her  silky  leaf; 
O'er  the  young  shoot  the  charlock  throws  a  shade, 
And  clasping  tares  cling  round  the  sickly  blade; 
With  mingled  tints  the  rocky  coasts  abound, 
And  a  sad  splendour  vainly  shines  around."  l 

Crabbe's  interest,  however,  centered  less  in  the  menacing 
nature  that  threatened  the  very  existence  of  Aldborough  than 
in  the  lives  of  its  inhabitants.  Though  fishermen  by  trade,  the 
men  spent  much  of  their  time  in  smuggling  and  wrecking,  and 
were  thus  doubly  degraded  by  poverty  and  a  criminal  calling. 
With  this  "bold,  artful,  surly,  savage  race,"  2  whose  vices  and 
misfortunes  first  moved  him  to  paint  the  country  as  it  was,  the 
future  poet  of  the  poor  could  never  have  had  any  real  sympathy. 
Yet  he  was  forced  from  earliest  childhood  into  the  most  intimate 
relations  with  his  neighbors  by  his  father's  many-sided  connec- 
tion with  the  activities  of  the  town.  The  elder  Crabbe,  after 
several  years  of  teaching,  had  settled  in  Aldborough  when  he  was 
about  twenty  years  old  as  collector  of  customs,  and  from  that 
time  had  been  one  of  the  leading  men  of  the  place.  He  was,  as 
his  office  required,  unwearied  in  the  pursuit  of  smugglers,  and, 
according  to  the  records  of  the  church,  was  for  many  years  an 
active  member  of  the  vestry.  Moreover,  his  salary  as  collector 
of  customs  being  only  ten  pounds  a  year,  he  eked  out  his  living 
by  fishing.  But  though  energetic  and  honest,  and  more  than 
ordinarily  able  and  intelligent,  he  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of 
»  The  Village,  i,  63-78.   .  2  /^.,  112. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    85 

passionate  nature,  and  after  the  death  of  an  infant  son  in  1762, 
he  became  so  intemperate  that  the  life  of  his  family  was  made 
increasingly  wretched  by  his  violence.  Growing  up  in  such 
untoward  conditions,  an  observant  boy  like  George  Crabbe 
soon  learned  to  know  intimately  the  life  of  the  "wild  amphib- 
ious race"  1  with  whom  his  fortunes  were  cast.  His  description 
of  inexorable  nature  which  oppressed  the  villagers  in  their  daily 
struggles  for  an  insufficient  dole  of  daily  bread  is  only  a  trifle 
less  vivid  than  his  picture  of  their  lives ;  their  sordid  existence 
is  revealed  in  the  coarse  pleasures  of  their  hours  of  leisure,  as 
well  as  in  the  mean  adventures  of  smugglers,  or  of  wreckers 
pursuing  the  misery  that  the  ocean  had  spared. 

George  Crabbe  the  elder  apparently  soon  recognized  the 
intellectual  gifts  of  his  son,  and,  in  spite  of  his  poverty,  did  his 
utmost  to  prepare  the  boy  for  a  calling  better  suited  to  his  abili- 
ties than  that  of  a  fisherman.  Twice  he  sent  him  to  boarding- 
school,  the  dame's  school  of  the  day  offering  little  more  than 
care  for  the  children  and  an  elementary  knowledge  of  reading; 
and  twice  his  hopes  for  his  son's  progress  and  happiness  were 
j  disappointed.  To  the  first  school  the  boy  went  when  so  young 
that  he  could  not  fasten  his  own  collar,  and  there  he  almost 
lost  his  life  through  a  brutal  and  careless  punishment.  In 
the  second,  though  he  was  hardly  happier,  he  made  some 
progress  in  his  studies  and  laid  up  a  great  store  of  impres- 
sions of  the  boys  and  men  who  bullied  and  cringed,  feasted 
and  quarreled  around  him.  These  two  schools  having  proved 
unsatisfactory,  his  father  next  determined  to  train  his  son, 
now  fourteen  years  old,  for  a  surgeon,  and  to  this  end 
bound  him  as  apprentice  for  seven  years  to  an  apothecary  at 
Wickham  Brook.  But  here  conditions  were  even  worse  than 
they  had  been  before:  the  young  Crabbe  found  himself  little 
better  than  a  farm-hand,  with  no  chance  to  learn  and  forced 
into  contact  with  rude  and  ignorant  fellow  workers.  At  last  he 
took  matters  into  his  own  hands,  returned  for  a  short  time  to 
his  home,  and  then,  against  the  will  of  his  father,  established 

1  The  Village,  i,  85. 


86    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

himself  with  an  apothecary  in  Woodbridge,  where,  though  he 
learned  little  of  surgery,  he  filled  prescriptions,  lived  with  con- 
genial people,  and  developed  in  every  way,  until  he  was  ready 
to  go  back  as  a  surgeon  to  Aldborough  at  the  age  of  twenty-one. 

Though  his  first  year  of  practice  was  apparently  success- 
ful and  though  he  went  at  its  close  to  study  medicine  and  sur- 
gery in  London,  Crabbe's  career  as  a  physician  was  filled  to  the 
full  with  humiliation.  He  was  probably  in  part  the  victim  of 
local  jealousies  and  professional  rivalry;  but  in  the  most  favor- 
able circumstances  he  could  scarcely  have  hoped  to  succeed  as 
a  physician.  He  had  neither  a  thorough  knowledge  of  medicine, 
nor  the  confidence  in  himself  that  might  have  made  him  happily 
bold  without  it;  and,  though  his  dogged  perseverance  kept  him 
from  yielding  to  difficulties  apparently  overwhelming,  he  was 
by  nature  singularly  at  a  disadvantage  in  occupations  demand- 
ing initiative  or  adaptability.  In  the  five  years  of  his  practice 
in  Aldborough  he  found,  indeed,  every  reason  for  despair  and 
none  for  hope.  Yet  this  long  period  of  ineffective  endeavor  was 
not  without  significance.  During  the  intervals  of  his  school-life 
he  had  helped  his  father  in  his  many  kinds  of  work,  and  had 
even  in  the  later  years  of  his  medical  practice  earned  a  large 
part  of  his  scanty  living  by  the  rough  labor  of  the  boats  and 
wharves.  He  had  found  time,  also,  to  continue  the  study  of 
botany  and  entomology  begun  at  Woodbridge,  and  while  in 
charge  of  the  parish  poor,  he  had  learned  to  know  even  more 
intimately  the  sordid  misery  of  his  neighbors.  These  later  years 
in  his  native  district  completed  his  peculiar  preparation  for 
poetry.  He  wrote  little,  it  is  true,  at  the  time,  concentrating 
his  attention  on  the  practical  work  of  his  various  callings,  and 
on  his  several  lines  of  study.  But  his  more  intelligent  knowl- 
edge of  country  and  people  deepened  his  understanding  of  them, 
and  his  enforced  familarity  with  much  that  he  would  gladly 
have  escaped  served  to  stereotype  in  his  memory  scenes  that 
else  might  have  passed  from  him  with  the  passing  of  his  somber 
boyhood. 

But  these  early  impressions,  deeply  etched  upon  his  mind, 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE         87 

might  never  have  taken  form  in  poetry,  without  the  stimulus  of 
imaginative  literature,  contact  with  which,  happily,  was  not 
wanting.  His  father,  who  was  something  of  a  poet  and  a  sin- 
cere lover  of  books,  often  spent  his  evenings  in  reading  his 
favorite  poems  —  especially  those  of  Milton,  Young,  and  Pope 
—  aloud  to  his  family.  To  the  boy,  who,  in  his  wind-swept, 
wave-washed  home,  listened  to  the  roll  of  great  English  verse, 
books  opened  the  door  of  escape  to  the  larger  life  in  which  his 
mind  might  find  itself.  His  writing  bears  irrefutable  testi- 
mony to  the  influence  of  the  poets  with  whom  his  father  made 
him  early  familiar.  Besides  forming  his  taste,  they  must  have 
done  much  to  strengthen  in  him  that  sense  of  the  moral  order 
of  the  universe  which  underlay  all  his  study  of  actual  people 
and  conditions.  Milton's  justification  of  the  ways  of  God  to 
man,  Pope's  triumphant  assertion  that  whatever  is,  is  right, 
would  seem  at  first  glance  as  likely  as  the  gilded  pictures  of 
pastoral  life  to  arouse  the  protest  of  the  boy  who  had  from 
earliest  childhood  felt  the  relentless  enmity  of  nature  to  human- 
kind, and  had  seen  scowling  suspicion  and  "  sullen  woe  "  l  every- 
where in  the  faces  around  him.  But  there  was  nothing  of  the 
rebel  in  Crabbe;2  and  in  spite  of  his  familiarity  with  facts 
which  seemed  to  discredit  their  conclusions,  he  unhesitatingly 
accepted  from  the  great  poet  of  Puritanism,  as  from  the  great 
poet  of  the  Enlightenment,  the  conception  of  an  ultimately 
rational  and  beneficent  universe. 

Even  more  absorbing,  and  perhaps  no  less  influential  in 
shaping  his  poetic  character,  were  "the  ancient  worthies  of 
romance"  with  whom  in  his  early  years  he  sought  brief  res- 
pite from  a  life  of  premature  sadness.  While  his  father 
amused  himself  with  the  mathematical  studies  which  were 
his  especial  interest,  the  boy  read  everything  on  which  he 
could  lay  his  hands.  Especially  happy  were  his  wanderings 
through   the   "world   bewitched"   of   fairyland   and   legend, 

1  The  Village,  i,  86. 

2  R.  Huchon,  George  Crabbe  and  His  Times,  tr.  Frederick  Clarke,  ed.  1907, 
p.  460. 


88    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

where  he  lived  for  the  time  in  an  imagined  paradise  with 
"doughty  giants,"  with  knights  "blue,  green  and  yellow/' 
with  fairy-folk  in  "merry  moonshine  tippling  dew,"  and  with 
that  "last  lingering  fiction  of  the  brain,"  the  churchyard  ghost. 
In  later  years,  he  looked  back,  it  is  true,  upon  his  early  delight 
in  this  dream-world  as  but  "the  wayward  wanderings"  of 
youth,  and  saw  in  its  illusions,  when  tried  by  the  riches  of 
actual  life,  but  "the  shadows  of  a  shade."  Yet  transient  as  was 
this  literary  joy,  it  is  with  full  sense  of  its  meaning  in  his  own 
experience  that  the  singer  of  reality  says:  — 

"Ah!  happy  he  who  thus,  in  magic  themes, 
O'er  worlds  bewitch'd  in  early  rapture  dreams, 
Where  wild  Enchantment  waves  her  potent  wand, 
And  Fancy's  beauties  fill  her  fairy  land; 
Where  doubtful  objects  strange  desires  excite, 
And  Fear  and  Ignorance  afford  delight."  l 

Too  matter-of-fact  in  interest  and  too  resolute  in  courage  to 
remain  long  under  the  enchantment  of  the  fictitious  world  in 
which  his  childhood  had  reveled,  Crabbe  soon  turned  all  his 
energy  to  the  study  of  the  life  around  him.  But  his  brief  incur- 
sion into  the  realm  of  the  wonderful  must  have  sent  him  back 
to  look  with  freshened  vision  on  the  scenes  of  familiar  hardship 
and  toil;  without  this  escape  into  the  freer  and  happier  regions 
of  the  imaginative  it  is  even  possible  that  his  poetic  energy 
might  have  slackened  or  died  in  the  depression  of  his  daily  life. 

The  conditions  of  Crabbe's  childhood  were  in  many  ways  like 
those  of  Burns  and  Carlyle,  both  of  whom  were  of  humble 
birth  and  deeply  influenced  by  early  circumstances.  Yet  the 
difference  in  the  situations  of  the  three  was  greater  than  the 
likeness.  Though  the  iron  of  necessity  entered  into  their  souls, 
both  Burns  and  Carlyle  found  in  the  homes  of  their  fathers 
a  heroic  simplicity  that  was  a  main  source  of  their  later 
strength.  The  world  of  Crabbe's  youth,  lacking  in  the  ele-  j, 
incuts  of  moral  as  of  material  beauty,  made  no  such  appeal  to 
his  imagination  or  affection  and  left  him  no  such  heritage  of 
1  The  Library,  565-70,  et  •passim. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    89 

noble  memories  as  inspired  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  and 
the  incomparable  portrait  of  the  deep-natured  James  Carlyle. 
Indeed,  it  must  have  seemed  when  in  1780  he  resolved  to  go 
to  London  to  seek  his  fortune,  that  the  first  twenty-five  years 
of  his  life  had  been  little  less  than  wasted;  he  had,  so  far, 
failed  in  everything  he  had  undertaken,  and  when  he  left  his 
native  place  he  had  barely  five  pounds  in  his  pocket.  But  this 
story  of  ill-fortune  was  after  all  only  half  his  tale:  he  had 
won  the  confidence  of  a  few  friends  and  the  love  of  the  young 
woman  who  had  had  the  courage  to  engage  herself  to  him 
during  his  apprenticeship  at  Woodbridge;  above  all,  though 
life  had  so  far  brought  him  neither  ease  nor  success,  it  had 
done  much  to  develop  his  peculiar  imaginative  qualities  and 
to  strengthen  the  resolution  and  courage  that  enabled  him  to 
endure  difficulties  which  he  could  not  overcome. 

For  courage,  in  spite  of  his  natural  hardihood  and  the  con- 
stant help  of  the  family  of  his  betrothed,  he  had  abundant  need 
in  the  year  spent  by  him  in  London.  He  had,  in  fact,  come  to 
the  end  of  his  resources  and  was  on  the  verge  of  imprisonment 
for  debt,  when,  probably  in  February  or  March  of  1781,  he 
wrote  the  letter  to  Burke  that  marked  the  turning-point  in  his 
career.  Burke  responded  to  his  appeal  at  once  and  generously. 
Through  his  influence  The  Library  was  published  in  July,  and 
Crabbe,  notwithstanding  his  formal  deficiencies  of  education, 
was  ordained  as  a  clergyman  before  the  end  of  the  year.  With 
his  establishment  in  a  profession  for  which  he  was  peculiarly 
fitted,  and  in  which  he  was  destined  to  a  long  period  of 
relative  happiness,  the  qualities  won  in  the  unequal  struggles 
of  his  youth  first  fully  developed.  His  pedestrian  virtues 
—  the  integrity,  refinement  of  nature,  and  wide,  though 
irregular,  knowledge  —  which  he  had  brought  from  Aid- 
borough  and  which  seemed  to  Burke  to  justify  his  entrance 
into  the  ministry,  had  had  no  small  share  in  setting  his 
feet  in  the  paths  of  pleasantness.  His  character  as  a  poet 
was,  moreover,  no  less  fully  developed  than  his  character  as  a 
man;  The  Village,  possibly  begun  before  his  acquaintance  with 


90    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Burke  and  certainly  finished  soon  after  his  short  curacy  at 
Aldborough,  proves  how  truly  he  had  found  himself  and  how 
clearly  he  had  marked  out  the  field  of  his  later  poetic  work. 
The  tragedies  he  had  seen  around  him,  from  the  moral  disinte- 
gration in  his  own  home  to  the  sorrows  of  the  paupers  for  whom 
he  had  cared  in  the  almshouse  at  Aldborough,  had  immeasur- 
ably strengthened  in  him  the  springs  of  that  melancholy  tender- 
ness, that  pity  touched  with  resignation,  which  was  perhaps  his 
strongest  feeling  about  the  human  lot.  This  profound  sense  of 
the  meaning  of  life  gave  depth  to  the  clearness  of  vision  that 
made  him  one  of  the  great  realists.  "Watching  folks's  faces," 
like  the  boy  Lippo  Lippi,  he  had  very  early  learned  "the  look 
of  things,"  and  must,  whatever  his  circumstances,  have  been 
among  the  poets  whose  first  appeal  is  to  the  eye.  But  the  school 
in  which  he  had  studied  had  deepened  his  sense  of  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  facts  on  which  he  looked,  and  so  had  made  him 
not  only  a  painter  of  manners  but  a  critic  of  life. 

It  is  the  result  of  Crabbe's  truth  to  conditions  he  knew  that 
in  The  Village  he  presented  the  characters  and  activities  of  its 
inhabitants  as  weighed  down  by  circumstances  well-nigh  intol- 
erable. The  people  that  he  pictured  were  of  a  race  hitherto 
unknown  in  literature,  as  unlike  the  peasants  who  inspired  the 
lament  of  Goldsmith  for  the  time  that  was  fled,  or  the  delight 
of  Burns  in  love  and  liberty,  as  they  were  to  the  visionary  crea- 
tures of  the  pastoral,  with  whom,  in  his  revolt  against  the  falsity 
of  romance,  Crabbe  contrasted  them.  Nor  did  they  bear  even  a 
remote  resemblance  to  the  shepherd-folk  then  living  in  parts 
of  Scotland  and  England  who  were  a  few  years  later  to  give 
Wordsworth  example  and  earnest  of  a  modern  age  of  gold:  men 
tilling  their  ancestral  fields,  bound  by  countless  pieties  to  the 
land,  and  forming  an  essential  part  of  the  society  to  which  they 
belonged.  The  people  whom  Crabbe  described  in  The  Village 
lived  in  conditions  absolutely  different  from  those  of  their  liter- 
ary contemporaries;  they  earned  at  best  less  than  a  liveli- 
hood, toiled  in  the  midst  of  a  nature  hopelessly  poverty- 
stricken  and  sterile,  and,  without  regular  employment  or  social 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    91 

responsibility,  were  at  once  a  menace  to  the  community  and 
a  witness  to  its  failure.  Crushed  beneath  the  burdens  of  pov- 
erty, and  starved  in  mind,  body,  and  estate,  they  appear  in 
the  poem  characterless  and  ignoble,  their  individuality  well- 
nigh  reduced  to  the  conditions  which  surrounded  it.  There  is 
variety  in  Crabbers  pictures  of  village  life,  as  the  gloom  is 
now  brightened  by  the  "frail  joys"  1  of  an  hour  of  leisure  or 
darkened  by  the  woe  of  loss  or  crime;  but  this  variety  only 
flickers  for  an  instant  against  the  prevailing  hopelessness. 
The  solidarity  of  the  people  is  a  solidarity  in  enduring  the 
wrongs  of  nature,  of  fortune  and  of  vice. 

Yet  the  isolating  misery  that  subdues  the  characters  and 
lives  of  the  poor  to  its  own  monotony  does  not  take  them  out 
of  the  pale  of  humanity;  it  rather  heightens  that  sense  of  com- 
munity of  nature  between  them  and  their  more  fortunate 
fellows  which  brings  their  sordid  experiences  within  the  range 
of  a  genuine  human  sympathy.  The  kinship  proclaimed  by 
the  poet,  especially  in  his  earlier  years,  was,  it  is  true,  oftenest 
a  kinship  in  weakness  and  vice;  the  moral  with  which  he 
adorned  his  tales  was  that  of  the  social  satirist  of  the  eight- 
eenth century.   He  wrote  of  lowly  life  as  it  is,  he  says :  — 

"To  show  the  great,  those  mightier  sons  of  pride, 
How  near  in  vice  the  lowest  are  allied; 


So  shall  the  man  of  power  and  pleasure  see 
In  his  own  slave  as  vile  a  wretch  as  he; 
In  his  luxurious  lord  the  servant  find 
His  own  low  pleasures  and  degenerate  mind: 
And  each  in  all  the  kindred  vices  trace 
Of  a  poor,  blind,  bewilder'd,  erring  race."  2 

But  though  he  could  be  trite  enough  when  he  drew  his  moral, 
Crabbe's  instinct  as  an  artist  was  far  truer  than  his  explanation 
of  his  purpose.  He  shows  in  his  portraits  of  the  villagers  the 
touch  of  nature  that  makes  them  the  kin  of  the  whole  world. 
"  The  shadow  that  rested  on  the  life  of  the  English  poor  in  his 
generation,"  formed,  according  to  Professor  Woodberry,  the 
1  The  Village,  n,  30.  2  Ibid.,  89-98. 


92    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

ground  of  his  painting.1  But  even  in  the  pictures  where  this 
shadow  lies  heaviest,  we  feel  its  darkness  chiefly  because  those 
lying  under  it  are  men  of  like  passions  with  ourselves;  and, 
because  we  see  ourselves  in  them,  we  first  become  aware  of  the 
tragic  meaning  of  their  degraded  and  sorrow-stricken  lives. 

The  sympathy  and  fidelity  that  made  The  Village  so  remorse- 
less a  picture  of  a  social  class  that  had  hitherto  lain  outside  the 
range  of  poetry  led  Crabbe,  as  his  experience  widened,  to  a 
more  varied  knowledge  of  character  and  to  a  corresponding 
change  of  poetic  form.  He  continued  to  be  especially  the  poet 
of  the  poor,  not  only  because,  as  he  says  himself,  "they  must  be 
considered,  in  every  place,  as  a  large  and  interesting  portion  of 
its  inhabitants,"  2  but  because  by  sympathy  and  experience  he 
held  the  key  to  the  understanding  of  their  hearts.  But  the  poor 
in  his  later  work  no  longer  formed  a  class  apart :  their  monoto- 
nous fortunes  were  relieved  —  and  intensified  —  by  contrast 
with  men  of  happier  worldly  estate;  their  monotonous  degrada- 
tion was  brightened  by  examples  from  among  themselves  of 
that  wise  self-control  and  resignation  which  Crabbe,  like  Words- 
worth, regarded  as  the  measure  of  human  happiness.  As  his 
subject-matter  widened,  his  form  became  correspondingly  freer 
and  more  complex.  The  brief  sketches  of  The  Village,  in  which 
character  was  wholly  illustrative  of  general  conditions,  were 
followed  in  The  Parish  Register,  a  poem  written  after  a  silence 
of  twenty-two  years,  by  the  presentation  of  more  highly  indi- 
vidualized types,  grouped  together  by  the  particular  events  of 
birth  or  death  or  marriage. 

This  advance  toward  a  more  varied  and  discriminating  pre- 
sentation of  his  material  indicates  the  trend  of  Crabbe's  later 
development.  The  unity  of  The  Borough  consists  in  little  more 
than  the  enveloping  atmosphere  that  surrounds  the  scenes, 
while  in  the  Tales  and  the  Tales  of  the  Hall  the  attempt  to  con- 
nect them  even  through  the  shadowy  personality  of  a  common 
narrator  or  listener  is  given  up.   Crabbe  pointed  out  the  inner 

1  "Crabbe,"  Makers  of  Literature,  ed.  1900,  p.  95. 

2  Preface  to  The  Borough,  ed.  1905,  vol.  i,  p.  277. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    93 

relationship  connecting  the  Tales,  when  he  explained  his  dis- 
regard of  a  recommendation,  "from  authority  which  neither 
inclination  nor  prudence  "  led  him  to  resist,  to  arrange  the 
material  of  his  new  work,  if  not  in  the  form  of  an  epic  poem,  yet 
at  least  in  a  form  that  would  have  epic  unity  of  purpose  and  de- 
velopment. The  characters  at  his  disposal,  he  said,  though  they 
"were  not  such  as  would  coalesce  into  one  body,  nor  were  of  a 
nature  to  be  commanded  by  one  mind,"  yet  did  not  on  exami- 
nation appear  "  as  an  unconnected  multitude,  accidentally  col- 
lected, to  be  suddenly  dispersed;  but  rather  beings  of  whom 
might  be  formed  groups  and  smaller  societies,  the  relations  of 
whose  adventures  and  pursuits  might  bear  that  kind  of  simili- 
tude to  an  Heroic  Poem,  which  these  minor  associations  of  men 
(as  pilgrims  on  the  way  to  their  saint,  or  parties  in  search  of 
amusement,  travellers  excited  by  curiosity,  or  adventurers  in 
pursuit  of  gain),  have  in  points  of  connexion  and  importance 
with  a  regular  and  disciplined  army." 1 

The  freedom  and  elaboration  of  treatment  in  the  two  sets  of 
Tales  and  even  in  The  Borough,  allowed  for  a  more  detailed 
analysis  of  motives  and  for  the  presentation  of  more  elusive 
qualities  than  was  possible  with  the  definite  outline  of  The 
Parish  Register.  Yet,  in  spite  of  their  difference  in  method, 
these  later  works  show  no  deeper  understanding  of  human 
nature  than  do  the  earlier,  with  their  unsophisticated  people 
revealing  themselves  in  stories  of  brutal  passion  and  heroic 
endurance,  of  wise  thrift  and  mean  ostentation,  of  wrong  lightly 
inflicted  and  sin  bitterly  expiated.  The  fortunes  of  these  simple 
characters  move  us  quickly  to  pity,  to  terror,  to  disgust  with 
the  unadorned  ugliness  of  their  follies,  or  to  admiration  of  their 
unreflecting  and  courageous  goodness.  It  would  be  hard  to 
match  for  concentrated  pathos  the  story  of  Phebe  Dawson; 2  for 
squalid  repulsiveness  the  "preposterous  love"  of  the  aged  bride 
and  groom,  tottering  and  toying  before  the  altar;3  for  pious 
kindliness  the  picture  of  the  schoolmistress,  the  embodiment 

1  Preface  to  Tales,  ed.  1905,  vol.  n,  p.  6. 

2  The  Parish  Register,  n,  130-244.  8  Ibid.,  360  et  passim. 


i 


94    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

of  rustic  tenderness,  frugality  and  authority,  before  whom  the 
passing  village-lads 

"In  pure  respect  walk  silent  on  the  grass."  * 

The  later  stories  supplement  this  portrayal  of  simple  charac- 
ter with  studies  of  complex  spiritual  situations  or  pictures 
of  slow  spiritual  deterioration.  But  the  ravages  of  evil  are 
none  the  less  evident  because  the  subtler  self-seeking  depicted 
in  them  seems  at  first  glance  utterly  trivial,  or  because  the 
wrong-doer  escapes  the  merely  physical  punishment  that  is 
his  due.  The  dallying  Henry,  victim  of  his  father's  cupidity 
and  his  own  weakness,  declines  from  his  love  for  Cecilia  to  the 
easy  caresses  of  the  pliant  Fanny,  only  to  find  his  fitting  reward 
in  long  submission  to  the  "fond,  teasing,  anxious  wife,"  who 
"Lives  but  t'  entreat,  implore,  resent,  accuse."  2 

Sir  Owen  Dale,  deserving,  at  least  till  his  conversion,  the  title  of 
"the  Egoist  in  little,"  sinks  to  the  basest  cruelty,  while  boasting 
as  justice  the  vengeance  into  which  his  thwarted  passion  has 
been  transformed.  Nor  was  Crabbe  content  to  track  folly  and  DvL 
sin  through  their  mazes  of  casuistry  and  self-deceit;  with  equal  \ 
sureness  he  interpreted  the  goodness  without  guile  that  passes 
unscathed  through  fiery  trials.  There  is  perhaps  no  character  in 
literature  that  shows  more  convincingly  than  Ellen  Orford  the 
power  of  the  human  heart,  not  only  to  resist  evil,  but  to  grow 
in  spite  of  it  in  the  beauty  of  inner  integrity.  Her  goodness  is 
as  absolute,  her  character  as  essentially  simple  as  that  of  the 
"noble  Peasant,"  Isaac  Ashford,  — 

"A  wise  good  man,  contented  to  be  poor,"  3 — 

who  is  her  prototype  in  The  Parish  Register.  Not  only  do 
we  see  in  Ellen  the  picture  of  a  nature  beautiful  in  its  nobil- 
ity, but  we  come  to  understand  through  her  quiet  telling  of  a 
tragic  story  the  long  self-renunciation  and  devotion,  the  much- 
tried  faith  and  love  that  have  made  her  what  she  is. 

1  The  Parish  Register,  I,  605-6. 

2  "Delay  has  Danger,"  Tales  of  the  Hall,  xm,  738. 
a  The  Parish  Register,  in,  502. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    95 

Crabbe's  statement  that  his  characters  were  beings  of  whom  W 
groups  might  be  formed  touched  the  essentially  social  nature 
of  his  conception  of  life.  He  conceived  of  no  such  thing  as  an 
isolated  individual.  His  profound  interest  in  the  concrete  led 
him  to  study  men  so  closely  that  he  saw  them  as  part  and 
parcel  of  the  world  to  which  they  belonged.  His  people  smack 
of  the  soil  in  which  they  have  grown,  and  are  intimately  related 
to  each  other,  as  well  as  to  that  larger  society  whose  creatures 
they  are,  however  unconscious  of  the  fact  they  may  be.  Thus 
we  find  in  his  poems  a  complete  as  well  as  a  detailed  picture 
of  the  age.  The  sketches  in  The  Village  have  been  described 
as  forming  a  realistic  epic  of  country  life.  The  stories  of  The 
Parish  Register,  each  suggested  by  the  record  of  births,  mar- 
riages or  deaths,  form  an  extraordinary  series  in  which  is 
embodied  the  whole  life  of  the  community.  The  Borough  leaves 
hardly  a  moral  or  a  social  problem  unstated  in  its  review  of  the 
circumstances  as  well  as  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  town.  A  writer 
in  Blackwood's  said  of  the  Tales  of  the  Hall,  in  the  year  of  their 
publication,  that  they  gave  a  general  view  "of  the  moral  char- 
acter of  the  people  of  England.'' l  And  the  later  works,  chiefly, 
like  the  Tales,  novelettes  in  verse,  though  without  the  concen- 
tration of  the  earlier  poems,  furnish  even  more  abundant 
material  for  a  true  comedie  humaine. 

Nor  was  Crabbe  satisfied  to  set  before  us  the  physical  and 
moral  aspects  of  the  England  of  his  day;  with  his  unfailing 
truth  to  reality  and  his  vivid  sense  of  the  relation  of  one  part 
of  life  to  another,  he  shows  in  people  and  circumstances  the 
causes  that  have  made  them  what  they  are.  It  is  by  the  remorse- 
less presentation  of  evil  working  in  and  through  existing  insti- 
tutions that,  in  spite  of  the  difference  between  them  in  theory, 
he  complements  the  work  of  the  radical  reformers  of  his  day. 
He  is,  indeed,  an  even  more  convincing  preacher  than  they, 
in  that  his  constant  appeal  to  facts  saves  him  from  any  ap- 
pearance of  extenuation  or  of  exaggeration.  The  environ- 
ment in  which  his  characters  grow  and  act  is  the  complex 
1  "Crabbe's  Tales  of  the  Hall,"  vol.  v,  July,  1819. 


96    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

environment  of  real  life,  seen  as  reacting  on  and  shaping  human 
destinies.  In  the  unhappy  community  of  The  Village  all  phys- 
ical, moral,  and  social  forces  work  together  for  evil,  which 
relentlessly  overmasters  every  possibility  of  happiness  or  well- 
being.  But  even  in  the  darkest  of  his  pictures  the  material 
want  that  impels  the  poor  to  vice  is  less  significant  than 
the  ignorance,  perversity,  and  self-deceit  which  makes  them 
the  inevitable  victims  of  poverty.  In  Crabbe's  later  work 
there  are  numerous  characters,  only  apparently  more  fortu- 
nate than  the  rest  in  their  exemption  from  the  degradation 
of  utter  poverty,  who  yet  do  not  escape  the  depraving  influ- 
ence of  a  sordid  moral  environment.  But  though  material  ne- 
cessity was  seen  by  Crabbe  as  but  one  of  the  forces  that  shape 
men's  lives,  he  was  too  true  to  his  own  experience  to  forget 
for  a  moment  the  peculiar  weight  that  hopeless  poverty  lays 
on  the  human  spirit.  It  saddens,  if  it  does  not  subdue,  even 
those  stronger  souls,  who,  in  spite  of  sinister  circumstance, 
achieve  the  serenity  that  is  substantial  happiness;  it  forms  an 
undertone  of  tragic  pathos  in  Ellen  Orford's  meek  acceptance 
of  her  portion,  or  in  Isaac  Ashford's  haunting  fear  that  he  may 
live  to  endure  the  humiliation  of  the  almshouse. 

Crabbe's  perception  of  the  relation  existing  between  char- 
acter and  outer  circumstance  made  him  an  admirable,  if 
unconscious,  critic  of  social  institutions.  Of  these  institu- 
tions none  apparently  interested  him  so  deeply  and  continu- 
ously as  did  the  almshouses.  The  attempt  to  alleviate  the 
increasing  poverty  of  the  time  by  the  establishment  of  alms- 
houses would  doubtless  in  any  case  have  aroused  Crabbe's 
interest,  even  if  his  experience  as  physician  to  the  poor  in 
Aldborough  had  not  given  him  early  and  intimate  knowledge, 
both  of  the  misery  existing  in  these  last  refuges  for  the  unfortu- 
nate and  of  the  infinite  diversity  of  character  among  inmates 
and  care-takers.  Miserable  as  it  was  in  itself,  he  thought  the 
almshouse  of  his  day  doubly  accursed  in  that  it  was  the  cause 
of  wide-spread  and  degrading  wretchedness,  —  whether  to  the 
weak  and  old  who  could  hardly  hope  to  escape  its  "final  woe"; 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    97 

to  the  homes  broken  up  by  its  enforced  bounty ;  or  to  the  care- 
less patrons,  overseers  and  servants,  who,  heartlessly  dispens- 
ing "the  cold  charities  of  man  to  man,"  paid  the  penalty  of  self- 
seeking  in  a  soured  and  hardened  humanity.  The  diversity  of 
the  characters  that  gathered  around  it  was  with  the  fewest 
exceptions  a  diversity  in  evil.  The  wrecks  of  society  who  filled 
its  walls,  the  victims  of  their  own  sins  or  those  of  others,  were 
certainly  no  worse,  though  infinitely  weaker,  than  those  who 
cared  for  them. 

It  is  of  course  in  The  Village  that  the  almshouse  is  pictured 
in  its  most  brutal  form.   The  ruinous  building, 

"Whose  walls  of  mud  scarce  bear  the  broken  door,"  l 

shelters  a  motley  company,  alike  only  in  misfortune :  — 

"There  children  dwell,  who  know  no  parents'  care; 
Parents,  who  know  no  children's  love,  dwell  there! 
Heart-broken  matrons  on  their  joyless  bed, 
Forsaken  wives,  and  mothers  never  wed; 
Dejected  widows  with  unheeded  tears, 
And  crippled  age  with  more  than  childhood  fears; 
The  lame,  the  blind,  and,  far  the  happiest  they! 
The  moping  idiot  and  the  madman  gay."  2 

But  this  abode  of  misery  is  not  too  mean  to  be  the  prey  of  par- 
ish priest  and  doctor  and  nurse.  The  callousness  of  these  mer- 
cenary attendants  appears  perhaps  most  baldly  at  the  deathbed 
of  the  old  pauper,  the  former  comrade  and  still  the  friend  of  the 
villagers.  To  the  cold,  dark,  rafter-lined,  ill-furnished  room 
where  the  dying  man  lies  "on  a  matted  flock  with  dust  o'er- 
spread,"  hurries  the  doctor,  possibly  Crabbe's  predecessor  or 
rival  in  Aldborough,  — 

"All  pride  and  business,  bustle  and  conceit; 
With  looks  unalter'd  by  these  scenes  of  woe, 
With  speed  that,  entering,  speaks  his  haste  to  go."  * 

Beside  him  stands  the  parish  priest,  — 

"A  jovial  youth,  who  thinks  his  Sunday's  task 
As  much  as  God  or  man  can  fairly  ask."  4 

1  The  Village,  I,  229.  2  Ibid*  232-9. 

3  Ibid.,  277-9.  <  Ibid.,  306-7. 


98    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Needless  to  say,  his  ministrations  are  of  the  most  perfunctory. 
Haled  hither  by  "the  murmuring  nurse"  from  an  hour  of  love 

or  sport, 

"The  holy  stranger  to  these  dismal  walls,"  1 

hardly  deigns  to  speak  a  word  of  comfort  to  the  soul  troubled 
about  his  title  to  eternal  joy.  And  even  on  the  day  of  the 
funeral,  "detained  by  weightier  care,"  he  puts  off  the  reading 
of  the  services  to  the  following  Sunday,  while  the  pauper's  hum- 
ble friends  follow  his  body  to  the  grave,  lamenting  that  "a 
poor  man's  bones  should  lie  unbless'd."  2 

The  squalid  misery  and  heartlessness  of  the  village  almshouse 
stands  alone  even  among  Crabbe's  grim  pictures.  His  later 
studies  characteristically  paint  the  more  subtle  and  elusive, 
though  no  less  far-reaching,  results  of  the  workhouse  system. 
In  The  Parish  Register,  its  baleful  influence  is  traced  in  the  ca- 
reer of  Richard  Monday,  the  waif  committed  to  its  care.  The 

boy, 

"Sad,  silent,  supple;  bending  to  the  blow,"3 

is  quickly  taught  by  the  base  usage  of  his  tyrants  to  cringe, 
to  lie,  to  bully,  to  provide  for  himself,  and  to  rise  in  favor  even 
when  he  falls  in  fame.  At  last  going  "  abroad  "  from  this  ignoble 
school,  he  finds  his  talents  so  fit  to  cope  with  the  world  — 

"He'd  no  small  cunning,  and  had  some  small  wit" 4  — 

that  he  dies  a  baronet  and  the  founder  of  a  wealthy  family,  the 
thrifty  dispenser  of  benefits  to  charities  and  missions,  yet,  in 
his  self-seeking  prosperity,  bearing  the  stamp  of  meanness 
imprinted  in  him  by  the  "vile  employ"  of  his  youth. 

The  same  evil  agencies  are  seen  at  work  in  the  poorhouse  of 
The  Borough,  different  in  type  as  it  is  from  that  in  which  the 
boy  Richard  was  so  basely  bred,  or  from  that  in  which  the 
aged  Villager  drew  his  last  breath.  Instead  of  the  ruinous  cot- 
tage-almshouse  of  the  smaller  town,  the  Borough  boasts  a 
noble  building,  the  gift  of  self-denying  love;  instead  of  the 


1  The  Village,  301. 

8  The  Parish  Register,  I,  715. 


2  Ibid.,  346. 

«  Ibid.,  i,  742. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE    99 

petty  rule  of  the  parish  officers  the  inmates  have  intelligent  care 
from  the  town's  best  citizens.  And  yet  this  well-appointed  dwel- 
ling is  still  hateful  to  the  poor,  who  find  its  cold  order  empty 
of  all  that  makes  life  worth  while:  the  greeting  of  a  passing 
friend,  the  sharing  of  a  story  lately  learned,  even  the  solace 
of  suffering  in  familiar  scenes.  Neither  the  kindness  of  the 
givers  nor  the  better  material  conditions  established  by  them 
have  eradicated  the  selfishness  and  vain  pride  of  the  over- 
seers, more  subtle  but  not  less  absolute  than  that  of  their 
humbler  counterparts.  From  the  doctor  and  priest  of  the  village 
almshouse  to  Sir  Denys  Brand  is  a  far  call;  but  though  Sir 
Denys  lived  simply  and  enriched  the  town  with  his  benefac- 
tions, he  is  as  lacking  as  his  prototypes  in  the  humanity  that 
would  lead  him 

"In  some  soft  moment,  to  be  kind  to  one"; * 

he  is  as  worldly  in  dispensing  charity  as  they  had  been  self- 
seeking  in  their  offices.  And  what  but  the  larger  scope  of  their 
iniquities  marks  the  inmates  of  "the  pauper  palace"  as  differ- 
ent from  those  of  the  tumbledown  almshouse?  Surely  there  is 
no  moral  advance  in  Benbow,  the  "boon  companion,  long  ap- 
proved by  jovial  sets,"  who  boasts  his  past  wickedness  while 
complaining  to  his  fellow  pensioners  that  he  lives 

"To  breathe  in  pain  among  the  dead  alive."  2 

And  there  is  none  in  Blaney,  "that  old  licentious  boy,"  who 
joins  the  nefarious  Clelia  in  dilating  on  the  joys  and  sins  of 
former  days  and  rejoicing  that  they  had 

"...  their  last  guinea  in  their  pleasures  spent, 
Yet  never  fell  so  low  as  to  repent."  8 

The  moral  of  the  whole  is  plain :  no  provision  for  material  well- 
being  can  redeem  from  its  fundamental  inhumanity  a  system 
which  respects  neither  the  tastes  nor  the  duties  of  the  recipi- 
ents, and  which  unites  in  a  purely  artificial  society  people  whom 
inclinations,  habits,  and  capacities  have  in  no  way  fitted  to  live 
together.  The  flaunting  triumph  of  the  vicious,  the  degrada- 
1  The  Borough,  xm,  16G.  »  Ibid.,  xvi,  229.  3  Ibid.,  xm,  332-3. 


100    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

tion  of  the  gentle  and  the  young,  the  dull  misery  of  the  stranger 
in  strange  scenes,  the  cheerlessness  of  existence, 

"With  nothing  dreadful,  but  with  nothing  new,"  * 

all  urge  the  right  of  every  human  being  to  pass  his  life  in  natural 
conditions  and  to  share  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  the  common  lot. 
Crabbe's  study  of  the  isolated,  artificial  society  of  the  alms- 
house, exhaustive  as  it  was,  forms  a  far  less  significant  part  of 
his  work  than  his  pictures  of  the  poor  in  their  own  homes, 
where,  however  they  suffered,  they  were  bound  to  their  kind 
by  an  infinite  number  of  natural  ties,  and  where  their  ordinary 
environment  and  their  natural  capacities  for  good  and  evil  are 
most  clearly  seen.  Though  it  is  in  the  description  of  their 
homes  —  so-called  —  that  Crabbe's  moral  code,  rooted  in  an 
industrial  system  even  then  passing,  is  most  effectually  dis- 
credited, and  the  need  of  reform  in  England  perhaps  most 
clearly  seen,  those  homes  are  far  from  being  monotonously  sad. 
The  greater  number  lie,  it  is  true,  under  the  shadow  of  hopeless 
poverty,  but  there  is  to  be  found  among  them  many  a  vine-clad 
cottage,  the  frugal,  industrious  owner  of  which  has,  by  fortune 
and  virtue,  won  a  humble  prosperity.  The  description  of  such  a 
dwelling  is  humorously  cheerful.  Its  low  walls  are  adorned  by 
prints  of  kings  and  prize  cattle,  of  romantic  legends  and  battles 
glorious  to  England,  hanging  side  by  side  and  teaching  each  its 
lesson  of  patriotism  and  morality. 

"On  shelf  of  deal,  beside  the  cuckoo-clock,"  2 

rest  the  books  that  give  their  unlearned  readers  all  they  ask,  — 

"The  tale  for  wonder  and  the  joke  for  whim, 
The  half-sung  sermon  and  the  half-groan'd  hymn." 3 

Outside  there  is  the  garden  patch,  which  not  only  yields  the 
industrious  cottager  vegetables  and  herbs,  fruit  and  nuts,  but 
has  room  for  a  little  plot,  the  special  object  of  his  pride  and  care, 

"Where  rich  carnations,  pinks  with  purple  eyes, 
Proud  hyacinths,  the  least  some  florist's  prize, 
Tulips  tall-stemm'd  and  pounced  auriculas  rise."4 

1  The  Borough,  xvm,  173.  *  The  Parish  Register,  I,  71. 

3  Ibid.,  75-G.  «  Ibid.,  149-51. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   101 

Crabbe  doubtless  rejoiced  as  an  artist  in  the  simple  beauty  of 
these  "fair  scenes  of  peace,"  while  as  a  thinker  he  found  in  them 
the  exemplification  of  his  moral  code,  the  practical  sanction  for 
his  belief  that  honesty,  industry  and  frugality,  unless  under 
exceptional  circumstances,  lead  to  happiness;  that  the  evident 
evils  of  poverty  come,  for  the  most  part, 

"From  want  of  virtuous  will, 
Of  honest  shame,  of  time-improving  skill; 
For  want  of  care  t'  employ  the  vacant  hour, 
And  want  of  ev'ry  kind  but  want  of  power."  1 

But  he  was  too  skilled  an  observer  and  too  sensitive  to  the 
darker  possibilities  of  life,  to  find  in  these  almost  pastoral  cot- 
tages more  than  the  occasional  brightening  of  a  somber  picture; 
he  habitually  turns  from  them  to  those  far  more  numerous 
dwellings  wherein  seemed  to  be  centered  the  social  tragedy  of 
the  age.  The  most  compact  description  of  the  surroundings 
to  which  the  poor  are  condemned  is  given  in  The  Parish 
Register.  There  is  inducement  to  nothing  but  vice  in  the  "in- 
fected row"  where 

"hungry  dogs  from  hungry  children  steal; 
There  pigs  and  chickens  quarrel  for  a  meal; 
There  dropsied  infants  wail  without  redress, 
And  all  is  want  and  wo  and  wretchedness."  2 

The  dirt  and  refuse  on  every  side,  the  offense  that 

"  Invades  all  eyes  and  strikes  on  every  sense,"  3 

are  infinitely  less  terrible  than  the  miserable  crowds  that  throng 
the  street;  "the  sot,  the  cheat,  the  shrew,"  the  beaten  wife  and 
hungry  children,  the  boy  thief  and  the  girl  drunkard  and  prosti- 
tute. 

And  even  worse  than  the  streets  are  the  houses  in  which  this 
motley  wretchedness  finds  nightly  shelter.  Nothing  could  be 
more  hideous  than  the  scenes  which  Crabbe,  in  the  spirit  of 
the  physician  to  whom  he  likens  himself,4  asks  us  to  visit.  The 
dirt,  assailing  sight  and  smell;  the  crowded  rooms  that  make 

1  The  Parish  Register,  i,  227-9.         2  Ibid.,  194-7. 
8  Ibid.,  189.  4  Ibid.,  213. 


102    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

innocence,  and  even  decency,  impossible;  the  greasy  cards  and 
obscene  ballads  that  serve  to  while  away  the  vacant  days  and 
nights;  the  openly  displayed  implements  of  theft  and  murder; 
the  drunkenness  that  battens  on  the  smuggled  flask,  —  all 
together  testify  to  a  misery  and  neglect  that  formed  a  genuine 
social  menace.  The  wretchedness  that  in  the  Parish  is  collected 
in  a  single  street  or  "row,"  situated  in  the  midst  of  a  friendly 
country,  is  in  the  Borough  further  heightened  by  contrast  with 
the  wealth  of  a  large  town.  The  "door-side  heaps"  and  rank 
growth  of  weeds,  the  tumbledown  houses  and  dirty  paths,  the 
groups  of  slatternly  women  and  quarreling  children  that  fill 
the  alleyways,  differ  only  in  number  from  those  of  the  Parish. 
Vestiges  of  former  greatness  in  pretentious  but  neglected  build- 
ings, and  the  nearness  of  flaunting  luxury  join  to  make  the 
meanness  of  the  town's  poverty  more  intolerable.  And  the  very 
size  of  the  larger  town  creates  one  of  its  peculiar  evils,  the  huge 
lodging-house  that  collects,  and,  by  collecting,  multiplies  its 
scattered  crime  and  misery.  Nor  does  this  ill-omened  shelter 
confine  its  evil  influence  to  the  poor  it  harbors.  The  house,  a 
"long  boarded  building,"  bought  in  its  decay  by  "a  humorist," 
—  "  ill  was  the  humour,"  says  our  guide,  —  wrought  harm  both 
by  offering  an  asylum  to  deceit  and  guilt  and  by  strengthening 
its  owner  in  a  hypocritical  philanthropy  which  is  the  very 
sophistry  of  greed.  Having  bought  the  place,  this 

"  Convert  to  system  his  vain  mind  has  built,"  * 

convinces  himself  that  he  is  using  it  for  the  benefit  of  the 
poor:  — 

"They  may  be  thieves;  "  —  "Well,  so  are  richer  men;"  — 
"Or  idlers,  cheats  or  prostitutes;"  —  "What  then?" 
"Outcasts  pursued  by  justice,  vile  and  base;"  — 
"They  need  the  more  his  pity  and  the  place."  2 

The  evil  of  this  neglected  neighborhood  is  the  more  nearly 
irremediable  because  these  "sinks  and  sewers"  of  the  town  are 
cut  off  from  any  saving  intercourse  with  its  better  forces.  The 

1  The  Borough,  xvm,  342.  *  Ibid.,  338-il. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   103 

reformer  never  meddles  with  them,  and  the  unsightly  refuse 
and  untended  walks  are  but  the  visible  signs  of  a  moral  and 
spiritual  apathy  that  leaves  the  people  in  the  desolation  of  outer 
darkness  and  makes  the  huge  lodging-house  even  more  baleful 
in  its  anti-social  influence  than  the  worst  of  the  almshouses. 

None  of  the  activities  of  Crabbe's  England  is  so  revelatory  of 
character  as  the  amusements  in  which  young  and  old,  rich  and 
poor  engage.  The  recreations  of  the  poor  are  inevitably  bound 
up  with  the  scenes  of  their  daily  occupations,  while  the  well- 
to-do,  like  the  well-to-do  everywhere  and  always,  seek  diversion 
at  home  or  abroad  according  to  their  mood.  But  in  either  case 
the  pleasure  is  moulded  to  the  nature  of  the  pleasure-seeker, 
and  thus  becomes  the  truest  index  of  his  worth.  The  whole  life 
of  the  Village  is  concentrated  in  the  pathetic  picture  of  its 
Sunday  holiday,  when  the  scanty  leisure  allowed  for  rest  and 
the  brief  joys  which  alone  can  flourish  in  so  poor  a  soil,  are 
desecrated  by  the  drunkenness,  brutality  and  malice  of  the 
Villagers  themselves.  The  children  in  the  midst  of  these  evil 
surroundings  snatching  in  their  hours  of  play  a  passing 
happiness  thrill  us  to  sympathy,  now  for  the  doom  of  those  so 
manifestly  born  to  degradation,  now  for  the  hope  that  springs 
everywhere  with  life.  In  the  great  common  room  of  the 
Borough  lodging-house  where 

"Need  and  misery,  vice  and  danger  bind 
In  sad  alliance  each  degraded  mind,"  x 

the  light-heartedness  of  childhood  finds  its  opportunity;  and 
while  their  elders  console  themselves  with  gin  and  snuff  and  tea, 
with  indecent  stories  and  games  of  chance, 

"Boys,  without  foresight,  pleased  in  halters  swing."2 

But  we  rebel  against  the  severity  of  the  implied  judgment  when 
we  see  those  same  boys,  "Rodneys  in  rags"  and  "lisping  Nel- 
sons,'*  launching  their  ships  in  the  stagnant  puddles  that  border 
the  wretched  street  and  watching  the  tossing  navies  with  delight, 

"When  inch-high  billows  vex  the  watery  world."  8 

1  The  Borough,  xvm,  352-3.  *  Ibid.,  372.  ■  Ibid.,  289. 


104    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

While  the  play  of  the  children  so  clearly  shows  their  twofold 
possibilities,  the  amusements  of  their  elders  reveal,  under  all 
differences  of  class  and  calling,  the  human  kinship  of  men  and 
women  of  every  condition.  The  brutal  indulgence  of  the  de- 
graded poor  is  of  like  nature  with  the  luxurious  dissipations 
of  the  wealthy;  the  idle  rich  who,  vacant  of  motive  and  inter- 
est, meet  together  to  eat  and  drink,  or  while  away  their  time  at 
the  whist-table  or  the  play,  differ  only  in  superficial  refinement 
from  the  criminals  and  paupers,  who  in  hovel  or  alehouse  seek 
a  like  forgetfulness.  With  amusements  as  such,  Crabbe  seems 
to  have  had  a  tolerant,  if  somewhat  distant,  sympathy.  He 
stops  for  instance,  after  a  satiric  account  of  an  evening  at 
a  club,  to  moralize  on  the  benefit  that  comes  from  such 
meetings:  — 

"Yet  there's  a  good  that  flows  from  scenes  like  these  — 
Man  meets  with  man  at  leisure  and  at  ease; 
We  to  our  neighbors  and  our  equals  come, 
And  rub  off  pride  that  man  contracts  at  home; 


Here  all  the  value  of  a  listener  know, 

And  claim,  in  turn,  the  favour  they  bestow." * 

Such  reflections,  however,  seem  rather  a  conventional  echo 
of  the  language  of  the  day,  than  the  result  of  any  deep  convic- 
tion in  Crabbe.  For  the  most  part  his  descriptions  of  the  diver- 
sions in  which  rich  and  poor  everywhere  sought  enjoyment, 
bring  the  severest  of  indictments  against  the  civilization  that 
made  such  pleasures  alluring.  Nor  can  we  forget  their  signifi- 
cance if  we  would.  The  trivial  or  degrading  recreations  of  all 
classes  stand  out  against  a  background  often  menacing  enough : 
the  excursion  to  ocean  or  country  takes  the  pleasure-seeker 
through  the  unkempt  land  lying  around  the  town  and  offending 
sight  and  smell  with  its  reek;  as  the  revelers  return  to  their 
homes,  the  shout  of  a  drunken  sailor,  passing  noisily,  breaks 
the  stillness  of  the  night,  or  the  ocean  blackens  with  the  destroy- 
ing storm. 

But  the  important  conclusions  to  be  drawn  from  Crabbe's 
1  The  Borough,  x,  79-92. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   105 

poetry  remain  implicit;  he  devoted  himself  unremittingly  to 
the  study  of  facts,  presenting  them  to  us  as  they  were  and 
leaving  them  to  tell  their  own  story.  He  was  not  only  in- 
different to  theory,  but  deprecated  any  general  use  of  the 
speculative  faculty  as  likely  to  lead  to  evil.  His  own  position 
in  regard  to  questions  of  theology  he  states  clearly,  when,  in 
describing  the  sects  of  the  Borough,  he  passes  from  the 
"pleasing  vision"  of  its  Swedenborgians  to  say  in  his  own 
person,  and  in  words  singularly  characteristic  of  his  own 
point  of  view:  — 

"To  the  plain  words  and  sense  of  sacred  writ, 
With  all  my  heart  I  reverently  submit; 
But,  where  it  leaves  me  doubtful,  I  'm  afraid 
To  call  conjecture  to  my  reason's  aid; 
Thy  thoughts,  thy  ways,  great  God !  are  not  as  mine, 
And  to  thy  mercy  I  my  soul  resign."  * 

This  submission  "to  the  plain  words  and  sense  of  sacred  writ" 
was  hardly  more  marked  in  Crabbe  than  was  his  deference  to 
the  inherited  wisdom  and  established  opinion  of  mankind.  He 
was  as  firmly  convinced  as  was  Burke  or  Coleridge  of  the  weak- 
ness of  the  individual  understanding  in  its  struggle  after  truth. 
Freedom  to  think  for  one's  self,  if  we  may  judge  from  his  treat- 
ment of  character,  he  regarded  as  at  best  a  doubtful  benefit,  a 
liberty  tolerably  sure  to  impair  the  moral  integrity  of  those 
who  exercised  it.  Speculative  thought  he  thus  naturally  asso- 
ciated with  all  that  is  subversive  of  good.  His  characters  illus- 
trate every  phase  of  the  evil  wrought  by  the  revolutionist  and 
the  sectarian,  or  suffered  by  the  individualist  who  will  follow 
the  inner  light  of  reason  rather  than  conform  to  the  collective 
wisdom  of  the  community.  He  frequently  deprecates  the  read- 
ing of  Paine  and  Voltaire  and  other  authors  associated  with 
the  cause  of  freedom,  as  tending  by  their  appeal  to  individual 
judgment  to  turn  men  of  the  lighter  sort  to  iniquity;  and  while 
he  was  profoundly  conscious  of  the  need  of  reform,  he  had 
apparently  small  sympathy  with  any  but  immediately  prac- 

1  The  Borough,  iv,  204-9. 


106    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

tical  plans  for  improving  evil  conditions.  Yet  his  antagonism 
to  speculation,  perhaps  because  of  his  position  as  a  clergy- 
man of  the  established  church  and  his  interest  in  the  condi- 
tions of  lower  and  middle-class  English  life,  was  called  forth 
far  less  by  the  social  or  political  philosophers  than  by  the  sec- 
tarian preachers  of  the  day.  These  he  regarded  as  a  great 
power  for  perverting  the  minds  and  morals  of  the  people,  and 
in  consequence  was  peculiarly  severe  in  dealing  with  their  short- 
comings. 

He  had,  as  befitted  his  office,  a  keen  eye  for  the  foibles  of  the 
regular  clergy.  He  does  not  spare  the  village  priest  who  pre- 
sides in  the  drunken  tavern  scene,  or  finds  in  whist  or  tea  an 
excuse  for  deferring  the  funeral  services  of  a  pauper.  No  one  of 
his  pictures  is  more  humorous  than  that  of  the  popular  vicar, 
the  "male  lily"  of  fashionable  taste,  who  as  he  sips  tea  with  his 
fair  parishioners  delights  to  join  in  "the  town  small-talk,"  and 
cull  from  the  admiring  circle  a  fresh  store  of 

"  Intrigues  half-gather'd,  conversation-scraps, 
Kitchen-cabals  and  nursery-mishaps."  x 

whose  desire  to  please  is  tempered  by  a  fear  to  offend,  the 
softness  of  whose  discourses  is  purchased  at  the  price  of  force, 
who  finds  in  habit  "all  the  test  of  truth,"2  whose  mind  is 
exercised  chiefly  in  his  chosen  arts  of  fiddling  or  fishing,  some- 
times in  altering  sermons  or  making  rhymes.  But  the  faults  of 
so  characterless  a  character  are  at  worst  conventional  vices, 
allying  the  priest  with  the  easy  society  in  which  he  lives.  The 
dissenting  ministers  are  of  a  different  and  far  more  dangerous 
type.  The  worst  of  them  is  the  sensualist,  who  uses  his  religion 
and  his  ministry  as  the  cloak  of  iniquity;  who,  like  the  weaver- 
preacher  in  Ruth, 

"beneath  a  show 
Of  peevish  zeal,  let  carnal  wishes  grow; 
Proud  and  yet  mean,  forbidding  and  yet  full 
Of  eager  appetites,  devout  and  dull." 3 

1  The  Borough,  m,  71-2.  2  Ibid.,  138. 

8  Tales  of  the  Hall,  v,  380-3. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   107 

The  personal  immorality  of  some  sectarian  preachers  is  not, 
however,  like  their  teaching,  characteristic  of  them  as  a  class. 
They  sin,  and  cause  sin,  primarily  by  disseminating  false  doc- 
trine: by  theiF  declaration  of  short  and  easy  methods  of  con- 
version, by  their  scorn  of  morality  and  their  pernicious  belief 
in  free  grace,  —  in  short  by  spreading  abroad  among  their 
hearers  ideas  subversive  of  any  genuine  virtue.  Nothing  in 
Crabbe's  eyes  is  more  perilous  than  belief  in  a  salvation  that  rests 
on  faith  rather  than  works,  in  the  name  of  which  one  of  them, 

"Borne  up  and  swell'd  by  tabernacle-gas," * 

scoffs  at  the  parish  preacher's  call  to  his  flock  to  "turn  to  God, 
and  mend,"  and  asks,  — 

"Can  grace  be  gradual  ?  Can  conversion  grow ? 
The  work  is  done  by  instantaneous  call; 
Converts  at  once  are  made  or  not  at  all; 


Then  can  no  fortune  for  the  soul  be  made 
By  peddling  cares  and  savings  in  her  trade."  2 

Such  doctrines  as  these  appear  and  reappear  in  Crabbe's  poems, 
either  as  the  actual  motive  of  wrong-doing  or  as  the  solvent  of 
all  right  habit  and  principle.  Those 

"who  preach'd  of  destiny  and  fate, 
Of  things  fore-doom'd,  and  of  election-grace,"  3 

were  largely  responsible  for  the  mental  darkness  from  which 
Ellen  Orford's  husband  sought  refuge  in  suicide.  The  perilous 
doctrine  of  dissenting  preachers  first  led  John  Dighton,  the 
convert, 

"  who  by  his  feelings  found, 
And  by  them  only,  that  his  faith  was  sound,"  4 

to  cloak  self-seeking  in  the  guise  of  religion;  then  lured  him,  on 
the  plea  that  "his  teachers  had  their  stains,"  to  exchange  this 
faith  for  an  irresponsible  skepticism,  "the  danger  of  the  free," 
and  finally  plunged  him  into  a  despair  from  which  no  sounder 
belief  might  rescue  him. 


*&* 


1  The  Borough,  iv,  271.  2  Ibid.,  309-19. 

3  Ibid.,  xx,  235-6.  *  Tales,  xix,  87-8. 


108    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Crabbe's  utterances  on  revolutionary  and  social  questions, 
though  much  less  frequent  and  less  decided  than  those  upon 
religious  matters,  are  marked  by  the  same  spirit.  Here  he  in- 
clines to  identify  conservatism  with  practice  and  radicalism 
with  theory.  M.  Huchon  contrasts  his  description  of  the  Tory 
Justice  Bolt  with  that  of  the  radical  orator  Hammond,  and  con- 
cludes: "  If  a  choice  had  to  be  made,  Crabbe  would  evidently 
prefer  Bolt,  the  Tory  magistrate.  But  he  likes  neither  and 
humiliates  both."  *  There  is,  however,  a  significant  difference 
in  his  descriptions  of  the  two  men.  Bolt,  the  very  type  of  the 
conservative,  joined  to  experience  and  native  sense 

"a  bold  imperious  eloquence; 
The  grave,  stern  look  of  men  inform 'd  and  wise, 
A  full  command  of  feature,  heart,  and  eyes, 
An  awe-compelling  frown,  and  fear-inspiring  size."  2 

Absurd  in  a  patriotism  that  found  in  church  and  state  naught 
"for  man  to  mend  or  to  restore,"  he  yet  has  many  of  the  quali- 
ties of  the  man  of  sense.  Hammond  is  physically  and  mentally 
of  lighter  calibre.  His  themes  are  described  by  the  poet  as  "a 
long  chain  of  favorite  horrors,"  and  though  he  heaps  up  in- 
stances of  oppression  and  appeals  to  every  humane  motive, 
there  is  the  coldness  and  vagueness  of  the  rhetorician  in  every 
syllable  pronounced  by  this  "man  of  many  words." 

Crabbe's  view  of  life,  with  its  insistence  on  facts  and  indiffer- 
ence to  principles,  might  easily  have  fallen  into  a  crude  and 
meaningless  realism.  Such  realism  is,  indeed,  the  defect  of  his 
virtue,  inspiring  most  of  the  commonplace  passages  that  weigh 
down  his  poetry.  At  its  best,  however,  his  world  of  fact  is  uni- 
fied and  deepened  by  his  apprehension  of  those  "inner  moral 
springs  of  character"  of  which  man's  life  is  primarily  the  ex- 
pression. It  is  this  penetration  into  the  sources  of  character, 
far  more  than  even  the  richness  and  truth  of  his  pictures,  that 
justifies  the  comparison  so  constantly  drawn  between  him  and 
Shakespeare,  making  him,  in  his  infinitely  less  magical  art  and 

1  R.  Huchon,  George  Crabbe  and  His  Times,  tr.  F.  Clarke,  ed.  1902,  p.  454. 

2  Tales,  i,  54-7. 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   109 

in  his  far  more  limited  sphere,  the  revealer  of  those  secrets  of 
the  heart  on  an  understanding  of  which  the  sense  of  human 
kinship  so  largely  depends.  Walter  Savage  Landor,  comparing 
him  with  Young,  says  that,  instead  of  moralizing  at  a  distance 
on  some  aspect  of  the  human  heart,  he  "entered  it  on  all  fours, 
and  told  the  people  what  an  ugly  thing  it  is  inside."  *  A  gen- 
eration brought  up  on  Pere  Goriot  and  The  Egoist  recognizes 
the  truth  rather  than  the  ugliness  of  his  revelations,  and  sees  in 
him  perhaps  the  subtlest  psychologist  of  his  time,  the  fore- 
runner of  those  searchers  of  character  and  motive  who  in  the 
nineteenth  century  so  greatly  enriched  the  knowledge  of  our 
kind.  But  Crabbe,  though  the  psychologist  of  his  age,  was 
not  a  psychologist  after  its  fashion.  He  never  demonstrated 
such  a  thesis  in  perverted  morality  as  that  of  Caleb  Williams, 
or  attempted  to  present  such  a  monstrous  conception  as 
Wordsworth's  in  The  Borderers.  Nor  was  he  especially  inter- 
ested in  the  phases  of  experience  that  chiefly  attracted  his  con- 
temporaries ;  he  cared  nothing  for  the  elementary  and  primitive 
mental  operations  as  such;  he  was  more  than  suspicious  of  all 
mystical  emotions;  he  early  turned  his  back  on  the  world  of 
romance,  and  he  had  little  sympathy  with  any  aspirations  for 
freedom  of  life  or  thought.  He  was  literally  absorbed  in 
studying  the  lives  of  real  people,  and  he  never  paused  in  his 
pursuit  of  any  character  until  he  had  mastered  the  springs  of 
its  action.  Professor  Woodberry  says  that  he  saw  "only  a  few 
and  comparatively  simple  operations  of  human  nature  —  the 
working  of  country -bred  minds,  not  finely  or  complexly  organ- 
ized, but  slow-motioned,  and  perplexed,  if  perplexed  at  all,  not 
from  the  difficulty  of  the  problem,  but  from  their  own  dullness." 2 
But  these  "  country  -bred  minds,"  though  slow  and  fumbling 
in  their  mental  processes,  have  a  certain  sturdy  individuality 
that  both  attracts  and  rewards  the  student  of  character.  Abso- 
lutely lacking  in  superficial  subtlety  of  mind  and  heart,  they 
yet,  through  the  concentration  of  their  energy  on  a  few  simple 

1  "  Southey  and  Porson,"  Imaginary  Conversations,  ed.  1891,  vol.  in,  p.  217. 

2  "  Crabbe,"  Makers  of  Literature,  ed.  1900,  p.  101. 


110    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

problems  of  life  and  in  a  single  sphere  of  activity,  gain  a  depth 
and  variety  of  experience  wanting  in  those  whose  energies  are 
dissipated  or  who  are  drawn  from  their  true  bent  by  larger  and 
more  various  opportunities.  Human  nature  is  at  best  an  instru- 
ment of  few  strings;  and  though  their  language  is  prosaic  and 
their  garb  commonplace,  there  is  hardly  a  power  or  a  passion 
that  does  not  flourish  in  utmost  vigor  or  even  in  highest  refine- 
ment among  the  Englishmen  of  the  lower  or  middle  class  whom 
Crabbe  has  pictured  in  his  verse. 

Crabbe's  penetration  into  the  inner  qualities  of  characters 
hitherto  featureless  and  inexpressive  in  literature  made  him  in 
a  very  real  sense  the  poet  of  the  people  in  his  own  day.  He  was 
by  no  means  blind  to  the  terrible  or  extraordinary  in  situation 
or  experience;  his  understanding  of  strange  phases  of  passion 
needs  no  further  proof  than  the  story  of  Sir  Eustace  Grey,  who, 
pouring  out  his  tale  to  a  chance  visitor  in  the  asylum  where  he 
is  confined,  passes  in  his  insane  delirium  from  despair  lest  his 
soul  be  lost,  through  the  ecstasy  of  religious  exaltation,  to  a 
most  worldly  delusion  that  he  is  still  the  arbiter  of  his  own 
fortune.  But  the  romantic  soul-lore  of  this  poem  is  less  signi- 
ficant, as  well  as  less  characteristic  of  Crabbe,  than  is  his  pre- 
sentation of  the  uneventful  lives  of  men  habitually  silent  as  to 
their  own  deeper  emotions.  The  tragedy  that  he  was  among 
the  first  to  see  is  the  tragedy  that  lives  in  the  commonplace; 
the  truth  he  revealed  is  the  truth  that  unfolds  itself  in  the 
ordinary  days  of  ordinary  people. 

With  his  distinctly  contemporary  material  he  dealt  in  the 
spirit  of  satirist  and  censor.  His  acceptance  of  an  essentially 
social  standard  of  conduct,  as  well  as  his  emphasis  upon  the 
essentially  social  virtues,  reminds  us  of  the  great  humorists. 
Egoism  in  the  disguise  of  folly  or  hypocrisy  is  almost  as  com- 
mon a  theme  with  him  as  with  Moliere  and  Meredith,  and  is 
handled  as  relentlessly.  Among  the  most  naive  of  his  egoists 
is  the  thrice-widowed  widow,  a  woman  inexperienced  in  spite 
of  much  sorrow  and  much  happiness,  who,  weeping  "  in  comfort 
in  her  graceful  weeds,"  is 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   111 

"  Civil  to  all,  compliant  and  polite, 
Disposed  to  think  '  whatever  is  is  right.'  "  * 

Equal  in  simplicity  is  the  preceptor  husband,  the  young  pedant, 
who  in  his  school-days 

"always  took 
The  girl  to  dance  who  most  admired  her  book,"  2 

and  yet,  ignorant  of  character  as  of  wisdom,  married  a  woman 
without  taste  or  knowledge,  ready  at  mention  of  a  poet's  name 
to  boast  of  her  reading  in  Pope  or  Milton  or  Shakespeare. 

"They  were  our  lessons,  and,  at  ten  years  old, 
I  could  repeat  —  but  now  enough  is  told."  3 

Such  pictures  of  the  naive  self-illusion  of  folly  are  perhaps 
Crabbe's  nearest  approach  to  humor.  Yet  even  in  them  the 
touch  of  reality,  however  slight  it  may  be,  suggests  the  tragic 
irony  that  marks  his  study  of  the  bolder  and  more  remorseless 
egoist.  For,  even  in  his  satiric  moods,  Crabbe  was  never  long 
unmoved  by  that  sense  of  humanity  which  lies  at  the  heart  of 
life  and  gives  a  sorry  pathos  to  the  moral  failure  of  the  most 
ignoble  or  self-indulgent. 

Through  his  profound  knowledge  of  the  England  of  his  day 
Crabbe  became,  in  spite  of  his  indifference  to  contemporary 
speculative  thought,  hardly  less  the  poet  of  the  new  democracy 
than  were  Wordsworth  and  Shelley.  Where  they  showed  what 
should  be,  evoking  from  past  or  future  examples  for  the  present, 
Crabbe  told  what  was.  In  spite  of  his  theological  belief  in  the 
power  of  man  to  overcome  evil,  he  never  flinched  from  the  por- 
trayal of  lives  mastered  by  circumstances  that  actually  lay  out- 
side their  power.  Poverty,  though  in  his  moralizing  moments 
he  might  glibly  declare  it  the  result  of  the  sufferer's  sin,  is  seen 
in  his  poetry  as  a  social  blight  threatening  the  physical  and 
moral  integrity  of  England.  It  is  everywhere  the  fruitful  source 
of  evil;  the  few  who  escape  its  degradation  are  saved  so  as  by 
fire,  and  virtue  and  happiness,  in  which,  as  truly  as  Carlyle  and 
Ruskin,  he  places  the  wealth  of  nations,  are  disintegrated  by 
1  Tales  of  the  Hall,  xvn,  523-4.        2  Ibid.,  ix,  13-14.        8  Ibid.,  371-2. 


112    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

its  touch.  His  indictment  of  it  is  hardly  less  strong  than 
Maeterlinck's.  Want  not  only  makes  impossible  outer  beauty 
and  decency  of  life;  it  is  potent  among  the  forces  that  destroy 
morality  and  kindliness;  it  vies  with  passion  in  degrading  mar- 
riage; it  strikes  at  the  roots  of  that  pride  and  independence 
which  give  stability  to  character;  it  darkens  the  happiness  of 
the  strong  and  brings  the  weak  under  the  yoke  of  fanaticism  or 
debauchery. 

But  the  same  integrity  of  vision  that  made  him  present  the 
effects  of  poverty  so  mercilessly  kept  him  from  painting  partial 
portraits  of  the  poor  in  which  they  appear  solely  as  victims 
of  the  lot  it  was  their  fate  to  endure.  His  characters  not  only 
reflect  their  environment,  but  influence  it.  They  are  not 
only  the  creatures  of  circumstance,  but  in  their  turn  they  help 
to  shape  the  world  in  which  they  act;  they  are,  at  least  to  a 
degree,  responsible  for  their  conduct  and  in  control  of  their  des- 
tinies. It  is  this  presentation  of  free  individuality,  the  assertion 
not  only  of  a  right  to  live  but  of  a  power  of  living,  that  makes 
Crabbe's  poetry  a  landmark  in  the  developing  sympathy  of  the 
century.  It  is  not  because  of  their  poverty,  but  in  right  of  their 
firm  resolution,  essential  refinement,  and  capacity  for  suffer- 
ing, that  many  of  his  heroes  take  their  place  among  those 
of  earlier  literature  and  interpret  the  class  to  which  they  belong 
through  the  revelation  of  human  possibility.  These,  like  the 
weaker  characters,  accept  unquestioningly  the  portion  that 
life  gives  them.  Their  fate  is  so  inevitable  that  struggle  is 
transformed  in  the  nobler  sort  into  a  kind  of  resigned  fortitude. 

To  this  temper  Ellen  Orford  gives  typical  expression.  Her 
story  recalls  that  of  Esther  Waters,  both  because  of  the  "griev- 
ous, base  and  dreadful  things"  that  befell  her,  and  her  matter- 
of-course  refusal  to  regard  them  as  exceptional  or  intolerable. 
The  vicissitudes  of  her  life  are  too  many,  and  some  of  them  are 
too  terrible,  to  relate;  yet  their  heaped-up  agony,  though  it 
troubles,  never  destroys  her  quietness  and  serenity  of  mind, 
which  are  the  result  of  a  rare  temperament  and  a  deep 
religious  faith.    She  dismisses  her  youth  of  much  sorrow  and 


THE  ENGLAND  OF  GEORGE  CRABBE   113 

little  cheer  as  but  "a  common  case";  outcast  and  alone,  she 
sees  the  mercy  of  heaven  in  the  labor  that  renewed  her  strength 
and  courage;  at  last,  blind,  bereft  of  all  dear  to  her,  and  haunted 
by  memories  of  misfortune  and  wickedness  in  husband  and 
children,  she  is  still  content,  living  in  the  day  and  looking 
cheerfully  to  the  morrow  of  her  death.  The  strength  of 
heart  that  never  betrayed  her  sets  her,  in  spite  of  failure  and 
poverty,  among  the  radiant  souls  that  have  mastered  fate. 

Something  of  the  same  fine  tenacity  of  spirit  appears  in 
Ruth,  who  in  character,  native  charm,  and  the  pressure  of  un- 
toward circumstances,  inevitably  reminds  one  of  Tess  of  the 
D'Urbervilles.  Betrayed  by  love  rather  than  by  her  lover,  and 
developed  by  bitterest  suffering,  she  finds  at  last,  through 
stern  truth  of  feeling,  courage  to  choose  death  rather  than  a 
degrading  marriage.  Her  story  is  told  by  her  mother,  the 
wife  of  a  fisherman,  a  woman 

"To  mirth,  to  song,  to  laughter  loud  inclined, 
And  yet  to  bear  and  feel  a  weight  of  grief  behind."  * 

With  these  common  qualities  she  unites  an  experienced  charity 
for  all  that  can  come  to  pass  in  human  life  and  something  of  the 
profound  wisdom  of  the  flesh  that  marks  Mrs.  Berry  in  Richard 
Feverel.  Ruth's  story  of  love  and  temptation  and  sorrow  be- 
comes, when  told  by  such  a  woman,  only  less  inexorable  than 
nature  itself. 

Far  different  from  these,  yet,  like  them,  showing  the  reach  of 
the  humblest  soul,  is  the  story  of  the  brutal  and  callous  Peter 
Grimes,  which  has  with  some  reason  been  called  "the  most 
powerful  tragedy  of  remorse  in  the  English  language."  2  Peter 

"was  a  sordid  soul, 
Such  as  does  murder  for  a  meed; 
Who  but  for  fear  knows  no  control, 
Because  his  conscience,  sear'd  and  foul, 
Feels  not  the  import  of  the  deed; 
One  whose  brute  feeling  ne'er  aspires 
Beyond  his  own  more  brute  desires."  3 

1  Tales  of  the  Hall,  v,  92-3. 

2  Paul  Elmer  More,  Atlantic  Monthly,  vol.  lxxxviii,  December,  1901. 

3  Quoted  from  Marmion,  on  title-page  of  Peter  Grimes. 


114    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

He  seemed  —  and  was  —  sodden  in  iniquity ;  yet  when  at  last, 
the  victim  of  haunting  imaginations,  he  died  in  panic  terror 
lest  those  whom  he  had  slain  should  return  to  torture  him,  the 
greedy,  cruel  and  sordid  Peter  entered,  through  the  poignancy 
of  his  mental  sufferings,  into  the  fellowship  of  the  ghost- 
haunted  Richard  and  Macbeth,  with  whom  the  thought  of  the 
author  linked  him. 

It  is  such  insight  as  this  into  the  depths  of  character  that 
made  Crabbe  the  spokesman  of  the  workaday  men  and  women 
of  England  in  his  time.  His  plain  tales  of  plain  people  in- 
finitely widen  our  knowledge  of  human  life  and  our  sympathy 
with  it.  And  because  the  characters  and  conditions  that  he 
pictured  give  a  searching  criticism  of  the  society  of  which  they 
were  the  outgrowth,  and  a  clear  indication  of  the  necessity 
for  a  new  ordering  of  that  society,  they  also  reveal  something 
of  the  magnitude  of  the  reconstructive  task  which  lay  before 
the  democracy  of  the  early  nineteenth  century. 


THE   SOCIAL   PHILOSOPHY   OF 
WORDSWORTH 


THE  SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF 
WORDSWORTH 

The  Lyrical  Ballads,  like  The  Shepherd's  Calendar,  marks  the 
beginning  of  a  new  era  in  poetry,  an  era  in  which  forces  hitherto 
in  great  part  unrelated  were  united  in  a  prophetic  vision  of  new 
aims  and  conditions  of  living.  The  professed  purpose  of  this 
little  volume  was  modest  enough.  "The  majority  of  the  .  .  . 
poems,"  says  Wordsworth  in  the  Advertisement  to  the  first  edi- 
tion, "are  to  be  considered  as  experiments.  They  were  written 
chiefly  with  a  view  to  ascertain  how  far  the  language  of  conver- 
sation in  the  middle  and  lower  classes  of  society  is  adapted  to 
the  purposes  of  poetic  pleasure."  But  the  poems  announced 
by  their  authors  as  verbal  experiments  were  far  more  remark- 
able for  the  conception  of  human  nature  on  which  they  were 
founded  than  for  the  theory  of  poetry  they  set  out  to  illustrate. 
Wordsworth  defined  poetry  as  "the  history  or  science  of  feel- 
ings," x  and  it  was,  in  fact,  as  material  for  observation  and  un- 
derstanding, rather  than  for  the  direct  presentation  in  which 
poets  had  always  delighted,  that  he  and  Coleridge  chose  as  the 
main  subject-matter  of  their  song  the  elementary  passions  and 
emotions,  those  phases  of  consciousness  which  defy  analysis  be- 
cause intertwined  with  the  very  roots  of  being.  To  this  study  of 
the  simple  and  universal  elements  of  character  they  were  drawn, 
both  by  their  conviction  that  through  perception  and  feeling 
men  come  most  directly  into  contact  with  the  ultimate  realities 
of  existence,  and  by  their  supreme  interest  in  realms  of  experi- 
ence hitherto  taken  for  granted  rather  than  explored  by  poets. 
To  Wordsworth,  moreover,  these  simple  and  universal  ele- 
ments of  character  had  a  further  significance  as  being  con- 
structive forces  in  the  new  social  order  for  which  he  looked  and 
of  which  the  world  stood  in  dire  need.  Overwhelmed,  like  all 
thoughtful  men  of  his  generation,  by  the  apparent  moral  failure 

1  Note  to  The  Thorn,  1800. 


118    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

of  the  Revolution,  he  turned,  with  an  intellectual  ardor  that 
reminds  us  of  Burke,  from  the  speculative  theories  on  which  it 
rested  to  those  more  fundamental  realities  which  he  came  to 
believe  justified  his  earlier  hopes  for  humanity. 

This  appeal  to  reality  was  from  first  to  last  distinctive  of 
Wordsworth's  thought.  While  the  dreamy  Coleridge  and  the 
methodic  Southey  were  planning  an  ideal  state,  a  Pantisocracy 
to  be  established  on  the  banks  of  the  remote  and  sweetly- 
named  Susquehanna,  he  was  studying  actual  conditions  in 
France  and  finding  in  them  the  justification  of  Revolutionary 
principles.  His  contributions  to  the  Lyrical  Ballads ,  the  first 
poems  of  his  maturity,  were  written  in  the  joy  of  a  great  dis- 
covery, the  discovery  that  men  he  had  familiarly  known,  men 
lowly  in  station  but  of  supreme  moral  dignity,  had  long  since 
attained  to  the  salvation  he  was  seeking  afar.  Before  the  second 
edition  was  published,  he  had  not  only  reflected  deeply  on  the 
significance  of  his  new  faith,  but  had  formulated  the  ideas  that 
were  to  determine  everything  that  he  afterwards  thought  and 
wrote.  In  the  Preface  of  1800  we  accordingly  find  a  much 
fuller  statement  of  his  poetic  purpose  than  in  the  earlier  Ad- 
vertisement. In  this  preface  he  tells  us,  not  only  that  he  pro- 
posed to  choose  incidents  and  situations  from  common  life  and 
to  relate  or  describe  them  throughout  in  a  selection  of  the  lan- 
guage really  used  by  men,  but  that  he  believed  the  scenes  of 
humble  and  rustic  life  to  be  the  true  subject-matter  of  poetry, 
for  the  following  reasons :  because  "  in  that  condition  the  essen- 
tial passions  of  the  heart  find  a  better  soil  in  which  they  can 
attain  their  maturity,  are  less  under  restraint,  and  speak  a 
plainer  and  more  emphatic  language";  because  in  it  "our  ele- 
mentary feelings  coexist  in  a  state  of  greater  simplicity,  and, 
consequently,  may  be  more  accurately  contemplated,  and  more 
forcibly  communicated";  because  "the  manners  of  rural  life 
germinate  from  those  elementary  feelings,  and  .  .  .  are  more 
easily  comprehended,  and  are  more  durable";  and,  lastly,  be- 
cause in  it  "the  passions  of  men  are  incorporated  with  the 
beautiful  and  permanent  forms  of  nature." 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    119 

This  theory  of  poetry,  distinctively  social,  though  limited  in 
social  scope,  was  directly  due  to  Wordsworth's  knowledge  of 
the  shepherd-farmers  of  Cumberland,  who  seemed  to  him  at 
once  to  embody  the  highest  human  virtues,  to  have  attained  to 
the  truest  human  happiness,  and  to  link  to  flesh  and  blood  what 
was  essential  in  the  hopes  of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  char- 
acter and  condition  of  men  familiar  to  him  from  his  youth  thus 
became  not  only  the  bridge  over  which  Wordsworth  passed 
from  the  unconscious  democracy  of  his  boyhood  to  the  philo- 
sophic humanity  of  his  later  years,  but  one  of  the  paths  con- 
necting the  social  ideals  of  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth 
centuries. 

Wordsworth's  philosophy  of  life,  or  perhaps  more  accurately 
his  idea  of  the  right  conditions  of  living,  was  a  no  less  vital 
part  of  his  thought  because  never  systematically  propounded 
by  him.  Speaking  in  1814  of  his  "determination  to  compose 
a  philosophical  poem,  containing  views  of  Man,  Nature,  and 
Society,"  he  said  that  he  did  not  intend  "formally  to  announce 
a  system,"  but  that,  if  he  should  "succeed  in  conveying  to  the 
mind  clear  thoughts,  lively  images,  and  strong  feelings,  the 
Reader"  would  "have  no  difficulty  in  extracting  the  system 
for  himself."  1  In  this  statement  of  his  poetic  method,  imply- 
ing as  it  did  his  whole  theory  of  the  social  function  of  poetry, 
Wordsworth  was,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  describing  his 
own  habit  of  thought.  For  him  "system"  remained  ever  im- 
plicit in  fact;  he  apprehended  it,  not  as  a  thing  in  itself  but  as 
it  existed  in  and  through  the  particular  and  concrete,  and  as 
it  appealed  primarily  to  the  emotions.  Yet  the  body  of  prin- 
ciples in  which  his  experience  was  epitomized  formed  an  inte- 
gral part  of  that  experience.  He  was  one  of  the  poets,  who, 
if  they  are  to  exercise  their  gift,  must  rest  in  the  conception 
of  a  coherent  universe;  in  his  exigent  demand  for  a  philosophy 
that  should  justify  life,  he  was  spiritually  akin  to  Dante  and 
Milton  and  Pope.  Living  in  one  of  those  great  ages  of  tran- 
sition when  the  landmarks  of  the  past  have  been  swept  away, 
1  Preface  to  The  Excursion,  1814. 


120    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

he  was  at  first  bewildered  by  the  loss  of  the  habits  and  stand- 
ards dear  to  the  home-staying  soul;  but  with  the  passion 
for  order  that  marked  his  thought,  he  turned  almost  immedi- 
ately to  map  out  the  strange  regions  in  which  he  found  him- 
self. His  clue  to  the  understanding  of  the  mystery  was  very 
different  from  that  of  his  great  predecessors;  it  lay  not  in  the 
revealed  will  of  a  Deity,  explicable,  however  absolute,  not  in  a 
mysteriously  harmonious  universe  of  which  human  life  was  the 
center,  but  in  the  "Mind  of  Man,"  the  "haunt  and  the  main 
region"  of  his  song.1 

Wordsworth's  poetry,  thus  resting  on  what  Mr.  Hutchinson 
has  aptly  called  a  "psychography,"  2  necessarily  lacks  the  clear- 
ness of  such  cosmogonies  as  those  of  Dante  and  Milton.  His 
definition  of  the  ultimate  truths  of  existence,  not  through  reve- 
lation or  a  rational  theology,  but  through  the  vision  vouchsafed 
in  their  best  and  happiest  moments  to  minds  living  in  accord 
with  the  primal  laws  of  being;  his  persistent  humanity,  which 
gives  his  thought  something  of  the  elusiveness  and  variability  of 
life  itself,  would  in  any  case  have  made  his  teachings  suggestive 
rather  than  formally  complete.  But  Wordsworth  was  not  only 
a  mystic  and  a  realist;  he  was  one  of  an  advance  guard  of 
thinkers.  And  so  it  was  inevitable  that  to  the  defects  of  his 
mental  qualities  there  should  be  added  the  weakness  due  to 
his  position :  the  over-emphasis  of  what  was  peculiar  in  his  be- 
liefs, the  failure  to  recognize  truths  superficially  opposed  to 
his  ideas,  the  narrowness  of  thought  that  marked  his  partial 
isolation  in  his  age.  But  it  was,  after  all,  the  very  magnitude  of 
his  task  that  entailed  this  measure  of  failure.  No  man  could  be 
among  the  first  to  rescue  from  ruin  some  part  of  the  revolu- 
tionary purpose  without  bearing  many  a  scar  of  the  struggle 
through  which  he  had  to  pass  and  many  a  sign  of  the  isolation 
and  loneliness  in  which  he  wrought.  And  whatever  was  lacking 
in  Wordsworth's  philosophy,  it  was  yet  vital  and  prophetic;  it 
voiced  thoughts,  still  inchoate  or  lying  in  the  borderland  of 
men's  consciousness,  that  were  to  move  the  next  century;  it 
1  The  Recluse,  i,  i,  793-4.         2  Lyrical  Ballads,  ed.  1898,  Introd.,  xlv. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    121 

was  rich  in  the  wisdom  which  he,  though  fallen  on  evil  days,  had 
won  in  the  hard-fought  battle  for  the  restoration  of  his  faith  in 
human  happiness. 

The  sources  and  the  development  of  his  social  beliefs  Words- 
worth presents  with  admirable  fidelity  in  The  Prelude,  which 
he  originally  planned  to  serve  as  the  introduction  to  his  monu- 
mental poem,  The  Recluse,  —  as  a  sort  of  ante-chapel,  he  ex- 
plains, that  should  lead  into  the  main  body  of  the  great  Gothic 
church  in  which  he  embodied  his  philosophy.1  It  is  characteris- 
tic of  him  that  in  this  story  of  "the  origin  and  progress  of 
his  own  powers''  books  have  the  smallest  place..  The  themes 
with  which  he  chiefly  dealt,  familiar,  even  commonplace,  to 
the  readers  of  the  late  eighteenth  century,  are  all  to  be  traced 
to  evident  literary  sources:  the  love  of  nature  and  the  sense 
of  the  relation  of  nature  to  human  life,  in  which  he  found  the 
clue  to  a  new  ideal  for  society,  had  been  the  staple  of  English 
poetry  from  Thomson  to  Burns;  the  conviction  of  spiritual 
reality  on  which  his  democratic  faith  ultimately  rested  gave  but 
another  expression  to  the  sense  of  things  unseen  that  had  in- 
spired the  religious  poetry  of  Cowper  or  the  uncompromising 
mysticism  of  Blake;  the  very  corner-stone  of  his  creed,  his  in- 
sistence on  the  inherent  right  of  life  as  such  to  opportunity 
and  happiness,  though  the  direct  outcome  of  Revolutionary 
thought,  was  intimately  related  to  the  belief  of  Pope  and 
Shaftesbury  that  humanity  holds  the  central  place  in  the  uni- 
verse; his  demand  for  a  return  to  nature,  to  a  simple  life  of 
emotion,  as  the  fundamental  condition  of  a  true  social  order, 
echoed,  for  all  its  English  concreteness,  the  resounding  gen- 
eralities of  Rousseau.  But  Wordsworth,  though  he  held  these 
ideas  in  common  with  his  contemporaries,  would  seem  to  have 
come  to  them  far  less  through  reading  than  through  a  direct 
emotional  and  imaginative  experiencing  of  them;  to  have  per- 
ceived their  meaning  only  when  he  had  rediscovered  for  him- 
self, and  at  first  hand,  what  must  long  have  been  verbally  fami- 
liar to  him  in  literature.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  books  in 
1  "Advertisement"  to  The  Prelude,  1850. 


122    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

oneway  and  another  played  a  large  part  in  his  development: 
his  comments  on  his  own  reading  show  a  wide  and  sympathetic 
acquaintance  with  English  writers;  he  knew,  says  Christopher 
Wordsworth  in  the  Memoirs,  "a  great  deal  of  English  poetry  by 
heart,"  l  and  his  references  to  the  poets  prove  his  appreciation 
of  them, — 

"  From  Homer  the  great  Thunderer  .     .     . 


Down  to  the  low  and  wren-like  warblings,  made 
For  cottagers  and  spinners  at  the  wheel, 
And  sun-burnt  travellers  resting  their  tired  limbs, 
Stretched  under  wayside  hedge-rows."  * 

But,  though  generous  in  his  recognition  of  the  debt  he  owed  to 
books,  Wordsworth  always  considered  them  as  secondary  in 
influence  to  nature,  God's  "pure  Word  by  miracle  revealed," 
or  to  that  understanding  of  the  human  heart  which  was  the 
chief  source  of  intellectual  strength. 

To  his  early  life  with  nature  Wordsworth  traced  the  be- 
ginning of  that  love  of  humanity  which  was  the  enduring 
foundation  of  his  later  philosophy.  The  intensity  of  his  de- 
light in  the  beauty  of  natural  objects  was  singular  even  among 
the  poets  of  his  generation;  he  could  not,  he  says  later,  describe 
the  "aching  joys"  and  "dizzy  raptures"  of  his  youthful  days, 
when 

"The  sounding  cataract 
Haunted  me  like  a  passion:  the  tall  rock, 
The  mountain,  and  the  deep  and  gloomy  wood, 
Their  colours  and  their  forms,  were  then  to  me 
An  appetite;  a  feeling  and  a  love, 
That  had  no  need  of  a  remoter  charm, 
By  thought  supplied,  nor  any  interest 
Unborrowed  from  the  eye."  3 

From  this  pure  sestheticism  he  emerged  as  he  came  to  asso- 
ciate human  life  with  the  scenes  of  nature  which  had  long  tyran- 
nized over  his  senses  and  his  imagination.    The  process  was, 

1  Vol.  i,  ch.  v.  2  The  Prelude,  v,  202-10. 

*  Lines  Composed  a  Few  Miles  Above  Tintern  Abbey,  76-83. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    123 

however,  of  the  most  gradual.  The  shepherd  passing  from  hill 
to  hill  through  the  smoking  dews  of  morning,  or 

'*  glorified 
By  the  deep  radiance  of  the  setting  sun," l 

first  appeared  to  the  beauty-haunted  young  poet  less  as  a 
fellow  man  than  as  a  solitary  and  sublime  object  forming  a  part 
of  the  landscape  and  taking  on  something  of  its  quality.  It  was 
only  as  he  was  brought  to  closer  quarters  with  reality  and  found 
his  early  facile  faith  in  humanity  shattered  by  humanity  itself, 
that  Wordsworth  came  to  understand  the  moral  and  social  sig- 
nificance of  the  lives  of  the  Cumberland  shepherds.  Yet  slow  as 
he  was  in  coming  to  this  understanding,  it  was  to  these  humble 
countrymen  of  his  that  he  owed  his  abiding  confidence  in  the 
essential  goodness  of  mankind,  and  in  the  power  of  the  lowly  to 
attain  to  happiness  through  daily  toil,  simple  living  and  accept- 
ance of  their  allotted  portion.  This  conception  of  character 
and  society,  essentially  democratic  even  in  its  imaginative 
idealism,  was  the  determining  element  in  all  his  later  thought. 
It  was,  too,  strengthened  and  enriched  by  the  experiences 
of  his  later  youth.  In  Cambridge,  though  he  judged  the  years 
spent  there  to  have  been  on  the  whole  profitless  enough,  the 
young  mountaineer  felt  himself  at  home  in  an  academic  equal- 
ity, in  which  the  students 

"were  brothers  all 
In  honour,  as  in  one  community, 
Scholars  and  gentlemen." 2 

In  London,  where  for  some  months  after  he  had  taken  his  de- 
gree he  lived  with  all  his  "young  affections  out  of  doors,"  3  the 
individual  instances 

"  Of  courage,  or  integrity,  or  truth. 
Or  tenderness,"  4 

in  which  he  especially  delighted,  were  heightened  in  interest  by 
the  tawdry  pomps,  the  idle  shows,  the  tragic  vice  surrounding 
them. 

1  The  Prelude,  vm,  269-70.  2  Ibid.,  rx,  227-9. 

»  Ibid.,  vii,  76.  *  Ibid.,  600-1. 


124    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

With  this  intensification  of  his  human  sympathy  a  sense  of 
the  mystery  and  vastness  of  the  city's  life  constantly  recurred. 
A  premonition  of  this  sense  visited  him  as  he  for  the  first  time 
drew  near  London. 

"  A  weight  of  ages  did  at  once  descend 
Upon  my  heart;  no  thought  embodied,  no 
Distinct  remembrances,  but  weight  and  power,  — 
Power  growing  under  weight." * 

He  had  glimpses  at  least  of  the  leveling  humanity  that  moulded 
all  its  diverse  activities  into  a  mystic  unity;  of  the  common 
spirit  moving  the  multitude,  which  had  already  been  recognized 
by  Rousseau  as  the  "general  will,"  and  by  Burke  as  a  vital 
force  pervading  and  uniting  society.  As  he  sums  up  the  effect 
of  the  city  upon  his  spiritual  growth,  he  declares  that  here  one 
sees, 

"more  than  elsewhere 
Is  possible,  the  unity  of  man, 
One  spirit  over  ignorance  and  vice 
Predominant  in  good  and  evil  hearts; 
One  sense  for  moral  judgments,  as  one  eye 
For  the  sun's  light."  2 

The  idealism  of  Wordsworth's  youthful  conception  of  life 
largely  accounts  for  his  early  indifference  to  the  French  Revo- 
lution. It  is  at  first  glance  singular  that  one  so  truly  democratic 
in  spirit  should  have  been  almost  untouched  by  revolutionary 
theories  as  set  forth  in  the  books  and  pamphlets  of  the  day. 
But  in  fact  the  young  dreamer  could  see  little  that  was  new  in 
the  ideas  and  aims  of  the  Revolution,  which  he  of  necessity  in- 
terpreted in  the  light  of  his  early  experience.  His  indifference 
was,  too,  of  short  duration.  Whether  drawn  by  curiosity  or  by  a 
desire  for  travel  which  was  one  of  his  master-passions,  he  went 
to  France  in  the  autumn  of  1791,  and,  living  for  the  greater  part 
of  a  year  in  the  garrison  town  of  Blois,  came  gradually  to  under- 
stand through  the  talk  of  the  officers  something  of  the  prin- 
ciples at  stake  in  the  Revolution.  Once  aware  of  the  actual 
condition  of  France,  Wordsworth  became  the  most  ardent  of 
1  The  Prelude,  vm,  552-5.  2  Ibid.,  667-72. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    125 

revolutionists,  and,  ready  as  he  always  was  to  prove  his  faith 
by  his  works,  determined  in  the  autumn  of  1792  to  throw  in  his 
lot  with  the  Girondists.  Yet  even  while  glorying  in  the  "be- 
nignant spirit "  l  then  abroad  he  seems  to  have  been  little  in- 
fluenced by  abstract  arguments  in  behalf  of  the  rights  of  men, 
urged  though  they  were  with  all  the  weight  of  friendship  by  the 
patriot  Beaupuy,  and  to  have  realized  to  the  full  the  loss  sure 
to  follow  a  violent  break  with  the  customs  and  traditions  of  the 
past.  The  one  irrefragable  plea  for  the  Revolution  was  the  ab- 
ject poverty  and  the  moral  degradation  which  he  believed  it 
would  banish  forever  from  the  world :  it  was  the  hunger-bitten 
shepherd  girl,  the  symbol  of  the  general  misery  of  France,  who 
finally  convinced  him  of  its  righteousness.  And  his  espousal  of 
the  cause  of  liberty  was  the  more  fervent,  because  as  he  came 
to  see  the  evils  under  which  France  suffered,  he  passed  from  the 
dream  which  was  to  color  all  his  later  thought  with  its  imagi- 
native beauty,  to  knowledge  of  the  real  world, 

"...  the  very  world,  which  is  the  world 
Of  all  of  us,  —  the  place  where,  in  the  end, 
We  find  our  happiness,  or  not  at  all! " 2 

Wordsworth's  sense  of  the  human  significance  and  practical 
necessity  of  the  French  Revolution  united  with  his  confidence 
that  its  principles  were  deep-rooted  in  the  nature  of  things  to 
make  the  wreck  of  his  belief  in  it  the  one  great  catastrophe  of 
his  life.  Balked  in  his  desire  to  aid  the  Great  Cause  by  his 
guardian's  refusal  to  send  him  money,  and  already  troubled  by 
the  ominous  violence  of  the  revolutionists  themselves,  his  mood 
was  such  that  the  war  of  aggression  begun  by  France  in  1792 
and  England's  alliance  with  Russia  and  Austria  struck  a 
double  blow  at  his  faith.  The  intensity  of  his  suffering  for  this 
general  woe  cannot  be  overestimated;  he  was  thrown  from  his 
habitual  course,  torn  up  by  the  roots  from  his  natural  habitat; 
the  world  in  which  he  lived  seemed  to  have  fallen  to  pieces 
about  him.  Yet  though  overwhelmed,  he  was  not  annihilated; 
1  The  Prelude,  ix,  519.  2  Ibid.,  xi,  142-4. 


126    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  vigor  of  mind  and  temperament  which  had  been  so  conspic- 
uous in  his  earlier  experience  forbade  him  to  accept,  like  the 
majority  of  his  contemporaries,  despair  or  apathy  as  his  por- 
tion, and,  his  native  belief  in  the  goodness  of  man  having  been 
discredited  by  the  stern  logic  of  events,  he  sought  for  still 
deeper  foundations  on  which  he  might  safely  build.  In  his  per- 
plexity he  first  turned  to  the  theories  of  the  extreme  radi- 
cals, of  whom  Godwin  was  the  leader  and  the  type.  This  at- 
tempt to  reestablish  his  faith  in  a  losing  cause,  though  not 
without  significance  in  his  spiritual  development,  was  doomed 
to  failure  by  the  very  nature  of  his  mind.  "Turned  aside  from 
Nature's  way,"  deprived  of  that  air  of  concrete  fact  which  was 
the  very  breath  of  his  intellectual  life,  he  dissected  his  world 
into  nothingness,  till  finally,  in  what  was  to  him  the  com- 
pletest  of  bankruptcies,  he  lost  all  feeling  of  conviction  and 
"yielded  up  moral  questions  in  despair."  *  Nor,  he  tells  us, 
did  this  unnatural  passion  for  analysis  leave  untouched  the 
world  of  outward  beauty. 

"  Even  the  visible  Universe 


.     .     .    with  microscopic  view 
Was  scanned,"  2 


and  like  the  moral  world  was  dissolved  into  its  elements  and 
ceased  to  nourish  his  imaginative  life.  His  restoration  to  spir- 
itual health  came,  as  he  delights  to  point  out,  not  through  the 
head  but  through  the  heart,  through  the  affectionate  minis- 
trations of  his  sister  and  a  renewed  sensitiveness  to  the  beauty 
of  nature.  Of  the  tragedy  involved  in  this  restoration  he  seems 
to  have  had  no  inkling.  He  had,  in  fact,  divorced  himself  so 
completely  from  the  world  of  thought,  had  thrown  himself  so 
whole-heartedly  into  the  rediscovered  life  of  intuition  and 
imagination,  that  he  gloried  in  his  weakness  as  well  as  in  his 
strength,  rejoicing  hardly  more  in  his  renewed  powers  as  a  poet 
than  in  his  abjuration  of  a  main  source  of  future  growth.  But 
1  The  Prelude,  xi,  305.  2  Ibid.,  xii,  89-92. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    127 

his  unconsciousness  of  loss  did  not  save  him  from  the  penalty 
that  must  be  paid  by  all  who  renounce  any  part  of  their  intel- 
lectual heritage;  the  narrowing  of  interest,  that  inevitably  fol- 
lows a  one-sided  moral  and  imaginative  activity,  is  increasingly 
evident  in  the  poetry  of  his  later  years,  where  his  earlier  spiritu- 
ality declined  to  orthodoxy  and  his  faith  in  mankind  was 
staled  into  a  commonplace  conservatism. 

The  inconsistencies  and  contradictions  into  which  he  conse- 
quently fell  did  much  to  obscure  the  fundamental  humanity  of 
Wordsworth's  philosophy;  yet  in  spite  of  them,  there  can  be  no 
doubt  that  the  serene  joy,  the  tranquil  assurance,  the  firm  pur- 
pose of  the  years  of  his  greatness  as  a  poet  were  due  to  the  re- 
conquest  of  his  faith  in  the  possibility  of  men's  earthly  good  and 
happiness.  The  crucial  fact  in  his  history  was,  indeed,  the  con- 
viction that  he  had  solved  the  riddle  of  life  not  only  for  himself, 
but  for  his  fellow-men.  His  misdirected  endeavor  to  reestablish 
his  lost  position  through  a  process  of  abstract  reasoning  had,  in 
spite  of  the  warp  it  gave  his  judgments  and  his  habit  of  thought, 
done  him  good  service  by  showing  him  the  unsoundness  of  any 
scheme  of  reform  that  does  not  rest  on  the  full  acceptance  of 
human  nature  as  it  is.  Fortunately  for  him,  in  his  hour  of  su- 
preme trial  he  found,  in  memories  whose  meaning  he  then  first 
came  to  see,  a  warrant  that  the  hope  which  for  a  time  seemed 
to  have  betrayed  him,  was  based  on  the  essential  nature  and  or- 
dinary experience  of  men.  A  crisis  like  that  through  which  he 
had  passed  could  be  met  by  him  only  through  the  recognition  of 
a  reality  deeper  and  more  enduring  than  that  which  had  been 
destroyed;  and  this  reality  he  found  in  the  lives  of  the  shepherd 
farmers  of  Westmoreland  and  Cumberland.  These  northern 
peasants,  long  little  more  significant  than  features  of  the  land- 
scape, became  to  him  when  once  seen  as  real  inhabitants  of  a 
real  world,  the  prophecy  of  that  gracious  existence  for  which 
all  men  everywhere  might  legitimately  hope;  they  restored 
that  faith  in  the  life  of  man  on  earth,  which  was  a  necessity 
of  his  being.  Of  the  foundation  of  his  social  creed  he  might 
truly  say :  — 


128    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

"  Yes  the  realities  of  life  so  cold, 
So  cowardly,  so  ready  to  betray, 
So  stinted  in  the  measure  of  their  grace 
As  we  pronounce  them,  doing  them  much  wrong, 
Have  been  to  me  more  bountiful  than  hope. 
Less  timid  than  desire.  " x 

The  fervency  of  Wordsworth's  advocacy  of  a  peasant-de- 
mocracy appears  most  plainly  in  the  poetry  of  his  early  ma- 
turity. Simple  and  rustic  life  gave  the  subject-matter  of  about 
two-thirds  of  the  poems  published  in  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  de- 
fined his  point  of  view  in  almost  all  of  those  written  before  1812, 
and  inspired  the  theory  of  poetry  which  he  set  forth  at  length 
in  1800.  But  his  promulgation  of  a  specifically  peasant  gospel 
was  as  brief  as  ardent;  with  the  passing  of  his  first  propagan- 
dist zeal  the  Simon  Lees  and  Peter  Bells  and  Betty  Foys  be- 
came less  and  less  conspicuous  in  his  writing.  The  shepherd 
farmers  of  his  native  country  had,  in  fact,  done  their  work  for 
him  when  they  had  proved  to  his  satisfaction  that  a  coherent 
and  happy  society  is  attainable  here  and  now;  and  his  concep- 
tions once  adjusted  in  accordance  with  this  belief,  the  poet 
henceforth  concerned  himself  chiefly  with  that  "general  soul 
of  man"  which  from  the  beginning  had  been  the  center  of  his 
interest.  But  though  his  preoccupation  with  the  rustic  was 
short,  the  type  of  character  which  he  continued  to  offer  to  his 
age  as  the  means  of  escape  from  its  materialism,  spiritual 
lethargy,  and  despair  never  lost  the  essential  traits  of  the 
conditions  in  which  it  had  been  first  discovered;  in  spite  of 
many  changes  of  garb,  it  remained 

"  The  ancient  rural  character,  composed 
Of  simple  manners,  feelings  unsupprest 
And  undisguised,  and  strong  and  serious  thought."  2 

It  was,  too,  thoroughly  democratic  in  that  it  proposed  as  the 
end  of  human  endeavor  virtues  attainable  by  the  many 

"repining  not  to  tread 
The  little  sinuous  path  of  earthly  care  "; 3 

1  The  Recluse,  i,  i,  G5-70.  2  The  Excursion,  v,  117-9. 

*  Ibid.,  in,  304-5. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    129 

it  was  primarily  moral;  its  power  was  fed  by  constant  springs  of 
elemental  feeling,  by  the  love  and  fidelity,  the  wonder  and  awe 
with  which  simple  natures  respond  to  the  call  of  the  universe 
and  to  the  demands  of  daily  duty;  and  it  preserved,  by  freedom 
from  base  and  overstimulating  excitements,  its  original  sensi- 
tiveness to  the  beauties  of  human  and  natural  life.  It  was  the 
character  of  the  potential  poet,  neither  articulate  nor  conscious 
of  itself,  to  whom  the  man  gifted  with  genius  may  reveal  the 
mysteries  of  their  common  being.  In  it  the  purely  intellectual 
qualities  were  secondary  and  unobtrusive;  the  free  play  of  per- 
ception and  emotion  and  an  orderly  and  beneficent  activity, 
made  up  the  whole  duty  of  man;  knowledge  and  power  of 
thought,  however  necessary  to  the  social  economy  or  to  the 
happiness  of  the  few  called  to  be  scientists  or  philosophers, 
were  not  conditions  of  universal  self-realization  and  hence 
formed  no  part  of  our  inalienable  human  heritage.  Such  an 
ideal  of  character,  limited  in  scope  but  possible  of  universal 
attainment,  exemplified  Wordsworth's  belief  that  the  elements 
of  the  highest  as  of  the  deepest  experience  are  those  basic  feel- 
ings and  obligations  in  which  all  men  are  equal.  It  boasted  no 
excellences  hidden  from  common  understanding,  no  virtues 

"  Hard  to  be  won,  and  only  by  a  few." * 

But  it  was  rich  in  those  elementary  experiences  that  nourish 
life;  it  accepted,  and  gloried  in  accepting,  the  common  lot.  It 
magnified  the  essentially  human,  while  relegating  to  a  secon- 
dary place  those  qualities  that  had  hitherto  been  accepted  as 
synonymous  with  greatness.  It  was  the  incarnation  in  flesh 
and  blood  of  the  long-professed  faith :  — 

"  The  primal  duties  shine  aloft  —  like  stars; 
The  charities  that  soothe,  and  heal,  and  bless, 
Are  scattered  at  the  feet  of  Man  —  like  flowers. 


Here  is  no  boon 

For  high  —  yet  not  for  low;  for  proudly  graced  — 
Yet  not  for  meek  of  heart." 2 

1  The  Excursion,  ix,  235.  2  Ibid.,  238-45. 


130    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

But  though  Wordsworth  was  occupied  with  humble  life  be- 
cause of  its  universal  value  rather  than  because  of  its  class- 
peculiarities,  he  often  emphasized,  in  treating  it,  details  ir- 
relevant to  his  main  purpose,  sometimes  in  order  to  point 
a  moral  or  expound  a  theory,  and  sometimes,  it  would  seem, 
from  pure  joy  in  his  new  field  of  observation.  These  occasional 
intrusions  of  the  outer  and  accidental  into  a  delineation  es- 
sentially typical  and  spiritual  —  the  pins  and  tape  in  the 
wanderer's  pack  to  which  Coleridge  objected  —  have  been  a 
veritable  stumbling-stone  to  Wordsworth's  critics,  their  very 
incongruity  bringing  them  into  undue  prominence  and  seeming 
to  justify  the  assumptions  that  Wordsworth  had  set  out  to 
paint  a  realistic  picture,  and  that  he  had  failed  to  do  what  he 
had  undertaken. 

The  case  against  Wordsworth  as  a  "stickit  realist"  is 
strongly  put  by  M.  Cestre,  who  finds  the  poet's  failure  in  the 
portrayal  of  human  character  the  more  significant  because  of 
its  contrast  with  his  treatment  of  external  nature.  In  describ- 
ing out-of-door  scenes,  says  the  distinguished  critic,  Words- 
worth shows  a  realism  more  delicate  and  more  varied  than  that 
of  Crabbe,  richer  and  more  flexible  than  that  of  Cowper  —  a 
realism  that  through  the  fullness  of  its  detail,  the  softness  of  its 
outlines,  the  striking  unity  of  its  whole,  places  him  among  the 
greatest  artists.  But  when  Wordsworth  turns  from  nature  to 
picture  human  life  he  follows,  according  to  M.  Cestre,  a  far 
different  method,  giving  us,  instead  of  real  people,  strange 
compounds,  made  up  of  concrete  elements  borrowed  from  the 
everyday  world  and  moral  traits  drawn  from  his  own  philo- 
sophic conceptions.1 

There  is  truth  in  this  analysis  of  Wordsworth's  treatment  of 
character,  but  it  is  a  truth  that  takes  small  account  of  the  poet's 
purpose  and  habitual  procedure.  For  Wordsworth,  interested 
not  in  characters  but  in  character,  was  concerned  with  the 
likenesses  rather  than  with  the  differences  of  men,  and  so 
turned  inevitably  from  their  dividing  outer  lineaments  to  the 
1  La  Revolution  Frangaise  et  Les  Poeies  Anglais,  ed.  1906,  p.  532. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    131 

informing  spirit  that  united  them.  With  all  the  vigor  and 
clarity  of  his  perception,  he  was  thus  never  a  realist  in  the 
ordinary  sense;  even  in  description  of  natural  beauty  the  accu- 
racy ascribed  to  him  is  rather  an  imaginative  penetration  which 
sees  the  object  illumined,  so  to  speak,  in  the  light  of  its  own 
idea.  He  has  what  Mr.  Caird  calls  "a  poetic  exactness  of 
mind,"  a  power  of  vision  so  simple  and  direct  that  it  lends  to 
his  "treatment  of  the  most  subtle  and  evanescent  of  spiritual 
influences,  something  of  the  precision  of  a  scientific  defini- 
tion." 1  His  own  account  of  his  writing  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads, 
with  its  emphasis  on  his  resolution  to  choose  subjects  from  real 
life  and  then  to  throw  over  them  the  coloring  of  the  imagina- 
tion, does  scant  justice  either  to  his  conception  of  the  workings 
of  the  poet's  mind  or  to  his  own  power  as  a  poet.  He  was  in 
fact,  in  spite  of  his  many  pedestrian  passages,  compact  of 
imagination,  and  only  in  prosaic  moments  pieced  together  ideas 
and  images  in  the  fashion  that,  in  the  inadequate  nomenclature 
of  a  new  theory,  he  elsewhere  classified  as  "fanciful."  And  the 
object  that  he  saw  as  a  whole,  he  saw  always  as  related  to  or 
expressing  the  spiritual.  The  quality  shown  alike  in  his  por- 
trayals of  character  and  of  nature  was  an  idealism  that  lived 
in  and  through  the  object,  an  idealism  that  gives  his  greatest 
poetry  the  very  sublimity  of  poetic  diction  and  expression  that 
he  abjures.  Reality,  so  called,  was  to  him  the  plastic  material 
through  which  the  idea  was  revealed;  and  when,  after  his  wan- 
derings through  a  barren  desert  of  speculation,  he  turned  back 
to  his  early  experience,  he  rejoiced  in  it  not  only,  or  even 
chiefly,  as  fact,  but  as  the  embodiment  of  spiritual  forces,  and 
so  as  the  assurance  that  the  hope  for  which  he  had  lived  was 
still  possible  of  realization.  His  restoration  to  actuality  was 
thus  literally  a  restoration  to  the  ideal.  It  had  been  through 
contact  with  facts,  with  facts  devoid  of  inspiration  and  ideality, 
that  he  had  first  begun  to  doubt;  through  barren  speculation 
divorced  from  facts  that  he  had  fallen  into  despair;  and  his 
recovery  from  this  despair  was  possible  only  when  he  came  to 
1  "Wordsworth,"  Essays  on  Literature  and  Philosophy,  ed.  1892,  vol.  I. 


132    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

see  "the  dear  green  earth"  l  to  which  his  heart  was  bound  as 
the  home  of  his  far-reaching  hopes;  to  recognize  the  "present 
good  in  life's  familiar  face"  2  as  earnest  of  a  greater  good  to 
which  men  may  attain. 

The  embodiment  of  an  ideal  in  the  actual  inevitably  entails 
certain  penalties.  In  Wordsworth's  case  the  price  paid  was  the 
final  limitation  of  his  social  program  to  intellectual  and  social 
mediocrity.  It  was  part  of  his  poetic  arrogance  to  think  none 
too  highly  of  the  reasoning  faculties;  part  of  his  revolt  against 
the  intellectualism  of  the  eighteenth  century  to  insist  on  the 
value  of  the  elementary  and  primitive  virtues.  These  less 
worthy  elements  of  egoism  and  reaction,  mingling  with  his 
nobler  enthusiasm  for  reality,  prevented  his  growth  through 
the  years  to  a  richer  view  of  life;  the  morning  promise  of  his 
thought  was  to  a  great  extent  belied  by  the  long  half -century 
during  which  he  applied  to  all  sorts  of  practical  problems  doc- 
trines formulated  before  he  was  thirty,  or  echoed  in  poetry  that, 
great  as  it  was,  became  increasingly  sterile,  the  ideas  that  had 
illumined  his  youth. 

Even  the  character  on  which  his  philosophy  rested  had  its 
share  in  limiting  his  thought;  it  presented,  not  the  whole  truth 
for  which  he  had  striven,  but  that  fraction  of  it  which  he  had 
won  hardly  and  against  tremendous  odds  of  circumstance  in 
the  disintegration  of  his  earlier  creed;  though  it  brought  his 
ideal  democracy  home  to  earth,  it  robbed  his  humanity  of 
many  a  hope.  Like  every  truly  popular  movement,  Words- 
worth's democracy  remorselessly  sacrificed  the  good  of  the  few 
to  the  salvation  of  the  many.  But  it  went  further  than  the 
enunciation  of  its  peculiar  truth:  not  content  to  declare  the 
wisdom  of  men  to  be  foolishness,  it  set  their  wisdom  and  their 
humanity  in  an  opposition  apparently  irreconcilable.  The 
loss  involved  in  the  acceptance  of  such  a  doctrine  was,  to 
the  immediate  and  superficial  view,  overwhelming;  its  gain, 
dimly  perceptible  to  the  eye  of  faith,  lay  at  the  end  of  a  long 
period  of  toil  and  culture. 

i  Peter  Bell,  Prologue,  51.  2  The  Prelude,  xm,  62. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH     133 

Bernard  Bosanquet,  speaking  of  the  present  moral  and  in- 
tellectual state  of  Europe,  says  that  we  are  to-day  standing  at 
the  beginning  of  an  era  parallel  to  the  so-called  Dark  Ages.1 
In  the  Dark  Ages  of  the  past  some  at  least  of  the  vital  truths 
presented  by  Christianity  were  appropriated  by  the  rank  and 
file  of  the  people,  and  were  incorporated,  though  slowly,  into 
the  universal  spiritual  experience;  in  the  Dark  Ages  through 
which  we  are  now  passing  the  larger  culture  of  the  few  is  be- 
coming the  possession  of  the  many;  the  belief  in  the  right  of 
all  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness,  is  passing  over 
from  theory  into  practice,  from  an  inspiring  trust  in  human 
possibility  to  an  unceasing  effort  to  justify  that  trust.  Words- 
worth was  among  the  seers  who  brought  this  modern  religion 
of  humanity  home  to  the  thought  and  affections  of  the  last 
century.  He  passed  from  the  old  order  to  the  new  through  the 
realization  that  the  happiness  of  mankind  was  even  more 
directly  the  result  of  character  and  conduct  than  of  knowl- 
edge or  power,  and  that  the  conditions  necessary  for  the  de- 
velopment of  right  character  and  conduct  could  be,  and  should 
be,  brought  within  the  reach  of  every  member  of  the  race. 
Much  that  he  considered  non-essential  we  to-day  believe   to 
be  the  common  birthright  of  men;  much  that  he  taught  he 
held  in  common  with  more  radical  and  more  intellectually 
courageous  thinkers;  but  neither  his  own  weakness  nor  the 
strength  of  others  can  materially  lessen  the  importance  of  the 
appeal  to  experience,  by  which,  in  the  day  of  its  eclipse,  he 
vindicated  the  fundamental  truth  of  the  ideal  of  democracy. 
For  the  time  being,  humanity,  if  personated  at  all,  appeared 
in  the  garb  of  the  rustic;  the  life  of  the  town  became  less  sig- 
nificant than  the  life  of  the  countryside;  the  world  of  logic  was 
forgotten  in  enthusiasm  for  the  worlds  of  spiritual  insight  and 
of  beauty.    The  actual  life  of  the  peasant  was  thus  the  start- 
ing-point for  the  development  of  one  phase  of  the  democracy 
of  the  new  century.  The  yeoman,  or  "statesman,"  of  northern 

1  "From  Paganism  to  Christianity,"  The  Civilization  of  Christendom  and 
Other  Studies,  ed.  1899,  pp.  55-8. 


134    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

England  took  the  place  that  had  been  occupied  a  few  years 
earlier  by  the  noble  savage  or  the  disembodied  citizen  of  the 
world,  offering  like  them  an  ideal  of  character  and  condition 
toward  which  society  must  move.  Men's  minds  could  ulti- 
mately rest  in  him  no  more  than  in  his  predecessors;  but  he  at 
least  lived  nearer  their  ordinary  experiences,  and  so  marked  a 
long  step  towards  the  realization  of  the  claim  for  the  many 
that  had  hitherto  seemed  little  more  than  a  Utopian  dream. 

Wordsworth's  social  conceptions,  simple  and  vital  as  they 
were,  lay  beyond  the  perception,  well-nigh  beyond  the  imagi- 
nation, of  his  own  time.  There  is,  indeed,  no  better  measure  of 
his  originality  than  the  failure  of  contemporary  critics  to  ap- 
preciate the  social  meaning  of  his  poetry.  Crabbe's  remorseless 
pictures  of  the  village  had  been  welcomed  for  their  fidelity  to 
nature  by  the  readers  of  news-sheet  and  novel;  Burns's  songs 
of  the  Scottish  peasantry  had  been  hailed  by  the  lovers  of  folk- 
poetry,  eighteenth  century  enthusiasts  for  the  primitive.  But 
Wordsworth's  philosophy  of  humble  life  was  hardly  guessed 
at,  even  by  the  smaller  public  who  appreciated  the  ballad-like 
simplicity  of  the  new  poetry  or  its  exquisite  truth  to  nature. 

The  reviews  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  which  of  course  bore  the 
brunt  of  the  critical  onset,  fully  justify  the  contention  of  Cole- 
ridge that  a  great  and  original  poet  must  create  his  audience  as 
well  as  his  poem,  must  himself  develop  in  his  readers  a  genuine 
appreciation  of  the  new  world  he  opens  to  them.1  Admiring  or 
condemnatory,  they  alike  concerned  themselves  with  the  more 
superficial  qualities  of  the  poems,  and  even  when  their  praise 
was  sincere  were  singularly  inconsistent  and  inconclusive  in  their 
argument.  The  Critical  Review  first  took  the  field  with  an  arti- 
cle then  and  now  commonly  attributed  to  Southey.  The  writer, 
whoever  he  was,  showed  himself  strangely  wanting  in  discrim- 
ination, his  approval  of  some  of  the  poems  being  offset  by  his 
familiar  description  of  The  Ancient  Mariner  as  "a  Dutch  at- 
tempt at  German  sublimity,"  2  and  his  declaration  that  the 

1  Biographia  Liter  aria,  note,  ch.  xiv. 

2  Lamb,  in  a  letter  to  Southey,  November  8, 1798,  said:  "If  you  wrote  that 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    135 

"experiment"  tried  in  the  book  had  failed,  not  because  the  lan- 
guage of  conversation  is  unfit  for  poetry,  but  because  it  has  here 
"been  tried  upon  uninteresting  subjects."  A  more  discerning 
critic  in  Griffith's  Monthly  Review  in  June,  1799,  treated  the 
individual  poems  sympathetically,  yet  concluded  that  it  would 
be  a  loss  to  poetry  to  return  to  these  simple  subjects  and  num- 
bers, since  "none  but  savages  have  submitted  to  eat  acorns 
after  corn  was  found";  and  a  contributor  to  the  British  Critic 
in  October,  1799,  remarkably  courageous  in  his  admiration, 
almost  ignored  the  subject-matter  of  the  book,  and  based  his 
favorable  judgment  chiefly  on  its  style,  declaring  that  "the  sim- 
plicity even  of  the  most  unadorned  tale  in  this  volume"  was 
superior  "to  all  the  meretricious  frippery  of  the  Darwinian 
taste." 

A  new  era  of  criticism  began,  as  Coleridge  pointed  out  in  the 
Biographia  Literaria,  when  Wordsworth  set  forth  his  theories 
of  poetry  in  the  Preface  of  1800,  the  reviewers  being  appar- 
ently aroused  by  Wordsworth's  explanation  of  his  purpose  to 
a  formal  condemnation  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads.  Their  common 
point  of  view  is  clearly  stated  by  Jeffrey,  the  most  influential 
as  well  as  the  ablest  of  them  all.  It  is  the  first  article  of  Jeffrey's 
literary  creed  that  the  standards  of  poetry  were  "fixed  long 
ago  by  certain  inspired  writers  whose  authority  it  is  no  longer 
lawful  to  call  in  question,"  and  that  they  included  among  other 
things  verbal  conformity  to  the  usages  of  good  society  and  a 
general  observance  of  the  laws  of  good  sense.  Uniformity  of 
vocabulary  and  point  of  view  in  poetry,  whatever  might  be  the 
subject-matter,  followed  inevitably  upon  the  acceptance  of 
such  a  creed.  "In  serious  poetry,"  says  Jeffrey,  with  a  lu- 
cidity that  allows  of  no  misunderstanding,  "  a  man  of  the  mid- 
dling or  lower  order  must  necessarily  lay  aside  a  great  deal  of 
his  ordinary  language;  he  must  avoid  errors  in  grammar  and 

review  in  the  Critical  Review,  I  am  sorry  you  are  so  sparing  of  praise  to  the  An- 
cient Marinere.  So  far  from  calling  it  as  you  do  .  .  .  a 'Dutch  Attempt,' etc.,  I 
call  it  a  right  English  attempt,  and  a  successful  one,  to  dethrone  German  sub- 
limity." 


136    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

orthography;  and  steer  clear  of  the  cant  of  particular  profes- 
sions. .  .  .  After  all  this,  it  may  not  be  very  easy  to  say  how 
we  are  to  find  him  out  to  be  a  low  man,  or  what  marks  can  re- 
main of  the  ordinary  language  of  conversation  in  the  inferior 
orders  of  society."  1  The  "low-bred  hero"  has,  indeed,  with 
this  reform  of  his  language,  undergone  a  sea-change,  becom- 
ing, under  whatever  name,  the  writer  or  man  of  the  world. 
The  finer  spirit  of  the  new  poetry  was  inevitably  misjudged 
by  a  reader  so  temperamentally  antipathetic  to  it.  Of  Words- 
worth's ideas  in  particular,  whether  on  poetry  or  society,  the 
critics  of  this  school  had  scarcely  an  inkling;  and  judging  the 
character  to  which  he  introduced  them  by  their  established 
canons,  they  speedily  dismissed  it  as  a  vulgar  intruder  into  the 
world  of  imagination  or  reduced  it  to  the  shadow  of  a  merely 
ideal  existence. 

Radical  social  thinkers  were  hardly  more  generous  in  their 
recognition  of  Wordsworth's  prescient  thought  than  were  the 
defenders  of  convention  and  tradition.  For  their  failure  to 
understand  that  he  was  with  them  in  their  war  for  humanity 
there  were  many  reasons.  The  independence  of  character  and 
life  that  isolated  him  from  the  more  superficial  intellectual 
currents  of  the  time  did  something  to  alienate  their  sympathy 
from  his  ideas.  The  increasing  political  conservatism  of  his 
later  years  brought  to  the  merely  casual  observer  the  strongest 
of  indictments  against  the  sincerity  of  his  earlier  democracy; 
the  high  courage  of  the  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Llandaff  was 
forgotten  in  his  opposition  to  Catholic  Emancipation  and  the 
Reform  Bill  of  1832;  the  disinterested  enthusiasm  that  inspired 
him  to  throw  in  his  lot  with  the  revolutionists,  in  the  timid 
conformity  of  his  laureateship. 

The  dissent  and  antagonism  aroused  in  radical  circles  by 
Wordsworth's  political  affiliations  were  especially  evident  in  the 
poets  of  the  next  two  generations,  who,  though  they  might 
accept  Wordsworth  as  their  master  in  his  interpretation  of  na- 
ture and  the  spiritual  life,  could  find  no  common  ground  be- 
1  Review  of  Southey's  Thalaba,  Edinburgh  Review,  October,  1802. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    137 

tween  his  ideas  on  social  matters  and  their  own  opinion;  who 
saw  —  and  were  compelled  to  see  —  in  his  increasing  con- 
servatism, only  the  renunciation  of  his  earlier  faith,  the  be- 
trayal of  the  cause  of  humanity,  the  treason  of  the  leader  lost 
to  mankind.  Yet,  if  they  could  not  feel  that  Wordsworth  was 
"with  them,"  neither  could  they  wholly  forget  the  courage  and 
humanity  that  linked  his  thought  to  theirs.  The  perplexity 
and  coldness  that  marked  their  attitude  are  evident  in  Mrs. 
Shelley's  vindication  of  her  husband  against  the  charge  of  at- 
tacking Wordsworth  in  Peter  Bell  the  Third  although  she  pro- 
tests that  "this  poem  was  written  as  a  warning  —  not  as  a 
narration  of  the  reality." l  The  sense  of  desertion  and  the  grief 
of  heart  felt  by  these  poets  finds  its  most  poignant  expression 
in  Shelley's  sonnet  To  Wordsworth:  — 

"One  loss  is  mine, 
Which  thou  too  feel'st,  yet  I  alone  deplore; 
Thou  wert  as  a  lone  star  whose  light  did  shine 
On  some  frail  bark  in  winter's  midnight  roar; 
Thou  hast  like  to  a  rock-built  refuge  stood 
Above  the  blind  and  battling  multitude: 
In  honoured  poverty  thy  voice  did  weave 
Songs  consecrate  to  truth  and  liberty,  — 
Deserting  these,  thou  lea  vest  me  to  grieve, 
Thus  having  been,  that  thou  shouldst  cease  to  be." 

But  even  had  the  ardent  radicals  who  followed  him  not  been 
repelled  by  the  facts  of  Wordsworth's  later  history,  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  they  could  have  discerned  the  likeness  that  existed 
between  their  ideals  and  his.  The  intension  of  his  philosophy 
was,  in  logical  phrase,  far  greater  than  theirs;  but  his  demands, 
whether  for  the  happiness  or  for  the  opportunity  of  men,  must 
in  the  nature  of  things  have  seemed  contemptibly  prosaic  and 
earth-bound  to  those  seers  of  visions  and  dreamers  of  dreams. 

While  Wordsworth's  social  teachings  were  for  different  rea- 
sons minimized  alike  by  conventional  and  radical  critics,  they 
were  only  partially  appreciated  even  by  such  a  friend  as  Cole- 
ridge.   Discussing   Wordsworth's   poetry   in    the    Biographia 

1  Note  by  Mrs.  Shelley  on  Peter  Bell  the  Third,  Poetical  Works,  ed.  Hutch- 
inson, 1904,  p.  402. 


138    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Literaria,  he  says  that  Wordsworth  both  misrepresented  his 
principles  and  injured  his  cause  when  he  claimed  that  the  expe- 
rience of  the  peasant  or  rustic  was  the  essential  subject-matter 
of  his  poetry.  The  friends  were  at  one  in  their  belief  that 
poetry  is  in  its  nature  ideal  and  philosophic  and  that  its  subject 
is  human  character  and  human  life  rather  than  the  accidental 
experience  of  an  individual.  But  their  conception  of  the  essen- 
tially human  elements  of  character  differed  widely,  Coleridge 
finding  in  the  philosopher  what  Wordsworth  regarded  as  char- 
acteristic of  the  rustic.  Wordsworth,  according  to  Coleridge, 
thus  mistook  the  true  character  of  poetry  in  seeking  poetic 
language  among  peasants,  the  vocabulary  of  the  poet  being 
essentially  that  of  the  thinker.  "The  thoughts,  feelings,  lan- 
guage, and  manners  of  the  shepherd-farmers  in  the  vales  of 
Cumberland  and  Westmoreland,"  which  Wordsworth  makes 
the  true  subjects  of  poetry,  says  Coleridge,  "as  far  as  they 
are  actually  adopted  in  those  poems,  may  be  accounted  for 
from  causes,  which  will  and  do  produce  the  same  results  in 
every  state  of  life,  whether  in  town  or  country."  These  causes 
he  names  as  "that  independence,  which  raises  a  man  above 
servitude,  or  daily  toil  for  the  profit  of  others,  yet  not  above 
the  necessity  of  industry  and  a  frugal  simplicity  of  domestic 
life;  and  the  accompanying  unambitious,  but  solid  and  reli- 
gious, education,  which  has  rendered  few  books  familiar,  but 
the  Bible,  and  the  Liturgy  or  Hymn-Book."1 

The  passage  might  read  as  a  transcript  from  Wordsworth; 
yet  the  conclusions  to  be  drawn  from  it  by  the  two,  were,  in 
emphasis  at  least,  very  different.  For  Coleridge,  with  his  char- 
acteristic love  of  the  abstract  and  general,  passes  beyond  the 
object  to  the  idea  behind  it,  and  declares  that  what  is  peculiar 
to  the  new  teaching  is  non-essential  and  misleading:  that  the 
rustic's  language,  purified  and  reconstructed  as  it  must  be, 
"  will  not  differ  from  the  language  of  any  other  man  of  common 
sense";  that  the  influence  of  nature  is  nothing  unless  the 
trained  mind  cooperate  with  it;  and  that  "the  best  part  of 
1  Biographia  Literaria,  ch.  xvn. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    139 

human  language"  is  derived,  not  "  from  observation  of  the  outer 
world,  but  from  reflection  on  the  acts  of  the  mind  itself."  l 
Wordsworth,  on  the  other  hand,  insists  that  the  essential 
qualities  of  moral  and  poetic  greatness  are  to  be  found  in  the 
simple  life  of  the  country;  that  the  man  of  sense  in  so  far 
as  he  is  genuine  in  his  humanity  uses  the  unsophisticated 
language  of  the  rustic;  and  that  these  universally  shared  feel- 
ings make  up  the  best  part  of  the  best  men's  lives.  There  is 
a  truth  in  Coleridge  not  found  in  Wordsworth;  but  by  passing 
too  lightly  over  the  object  on  which  Wordsworth's  attention 
was  centered,  the  greater  critic  lost  something  of  the  thought 
of  the  poet  who  found  in  the  life  of  the  peasant  the  norm 
to  which  the  highest  experience  must  approximate. 

Of  late  years  criticism,  more  historical  and  psychological  in 
method  than  ever  before,  has  especially  emphasized  the  rela- 
tion of  Wordsworth's  poetry  to  the  social  cataclysm  which 
shaped  its  character.  The  result  has  been  an  abundant  vindi- 
cation of  its  importance  in  that  work  of  moral  reconstruction 
with  which  the  poet  was  so  deeply  concerned.  Agreeing  as  to 
the  ultimate  value  of  Wordsworth's  philosophy,  these  later 
critics  yet  differ  widely  in  their  judgment  of  his  grasp  of  social 
principles,  and  of  the  degree,  and  even  the  nature,  of  his  influ- 
ence. According  to  such  a  Wordsworthian  as  M.  Legouis,  the 
poet  had,  in  his  later  years,  no  direct  connection  with  the 
practical  activities  of  his  time  and  affected  it  wholly  by  pro- 
mulgating an  ideal  of  individual  character  that  made  for  the 
general  good.  M.  Legouis  insists  that  Wordsworth,  after  his 
brief  period  of  enthusiasm  for  liberty,  withdrew  from  the 
world  of  action  to  a  life  beautiful  in  simplicity,  self-control, 
and  nearness  to  nature;  and  that  after  he  had  seen  the  revo- 
lutionary dreams  of  his  youth  expelled  from  the  domain  of 
politics,  he  found  a  tranquil  refuge  in  natural  surroundings 
and  in  poetry  and  poetic  theory.2  Wordsworth's  optimism, 
according  to  this  critic,  sprang  from  the  vitality  of  his  own 

1  Biographia  Liter  aria,  ch.  xvii. 

2  La  Jeunesse  de  Wordsworth,  ed.  1896,  p.  449. 


140    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

joyous  spirit,1  from  a  singular  capacity  for  happiness,  rather 
than  from  any  intelligent  apprehension  of  the  forces  oper- 
ating around  him;  and  his  work,  great  as  it  was,  was  there- 
fore limited  to  the  divination  of  those  spiritual  influences 
that,  in  the  wreck  of  a  large  social  hope,  were  shaping  out 
new  possibilities  of  individual  happiness. 

There  is  no  gainsaying  the  positive  truth  in  this  judgment: 
the  basic  fact  in  Wordsworth's  poetry  is  his  presentation  of  a 
type  of  character  true  to  the  conditions  of  the  new  democracy, 
and  offering  as  the  goal  of  endeavor  virtues  complementary  to 
those  demanded  by  the  thinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
for  the  time  at  least  destructive  of  them.  But  in  spite  of  Words- 
worth's renunciation  of  a  brief  enthusiasm  for  reason,  misap- 
plied, as  he  thought,  to  moral  and  social  questions;  in  spite  of 
his  recantation  of  what  seemed  to  him  insubstantial  schemes 
for  man's  happiness,  his  poetry  yet  contained  in  itself  the  ideas 
that  had  moved  the  philosophers  of  the  Revolution.  This  as- 
pect of  his  work  is  the  one  dwelt  upon  by  Professor  Dowden, 
who,  recognizing  to  the  full  that  Wordsworth  deals  with  char- 
acter as  the  primary  social  unit,  yet  points  out  the  persistence 
in  his  later  philosophy  of  the  ideas  that  had  moved  his  ardent 
youth,  and  declares  that,  in  spite  of  his  reaction  against  most 
of  its  learning,  he  is  allied  with  the  progressive  movement  of 
the  eighteenth  century  by  his  faith  in  the  beneficence  of  na- 
ture, his  desire  to  simplify  life,  his  sense  of  the  inherent  dignity 
of  man  as  man,  and  his  confidence  in  that  "high  destiny  for 
the  human  race"  which  is  the  inspiring  idea  of  democracy.2 

But  close  as  was  Wordsworth's  relation  to  the  eighteenth 
century,  it  was  neither  clear  nor  simple;  he  drew  his  ideas  from 
his  predecessors,  but  he  transformed  them  in  becoming  their 
interpreter.  It  is  on  his  peculiar  office  as  mediator  between  two 
centuries  and  two  social  orders,  that  M.  Cestre,  one  of  the  most 
penetrating  of  his  critics,  lays  special  stress.  Wordsworth's 
work,  he  says,  chiefly  consisted  in  the  transmutation  of  the 

1  La  Jeunesse  de  Wordsworth,  ed.  1896,  p.  392. 

2  The  French  Revolution  and  English  Literature,  ed.  1897,  p.  206-8. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    141 

ideas  of  the  eighteenth  into  the  motives  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. The  passionate  desire  for  moral  equality,  social  justice, 
and  fraternal  union  which  he  had  in  great  part  drawn  from  the 
Revolutionists,  he  brought  home  to  the  heart  and  life  of  later 
generations  by  an  imaginative  and  emotional  transformation 
that  for  a  time  obscured  their  relationship  with  the  past.  The 
imaginative  and  emotional  rendering  of  ideas  is  invariably  ac- 
companied by  loss  as  well  as  by  gain.  It  was,  as  M.  Cestre 
recognizes,  the  weakness  no  less  than  the  strength  of  the  poet 
that  his  radicalism  was  a  passion  and  a  sentiment  rather  than 
a  philosophy,  and  that  the  division  between  his  feeling  and  his 
thought  as  to  social  matters  set  him,  from  first  to  last,  at  odds 
with  himself.  Yet  this  critic  insists  that  the  evils  which  came 
from  this  divided  allegiance  were  far  less  than  the  good  that 
resulted  from  the  free  play  of  his  sentiment  and  imagination 
over  ideas  everywhere  dwarfed  by  premature,  self-interested,  or 
unintelligent  attempts  to  put  them  into  practice;  that  his  ro- 
mantic radicalism  made  possible  a  deeper  conception  of  society 
than  that  of  either  the  conservative  nobility  absorbed  in  it- 
self, or  the  middle-class  liberals  who,  in  the  name  of  humanity, 
were  working  almost  solely  for  their  own  advantage;  and  that 
the  very  separation  of  his  ideas  from  the  sphere  of  practice, 
although  it  limited  their  immediate  effectiveness,  increased 
their  power  to  further  that  emotional  reconstruction,  that 
linking  of  past  and  present,  which  was  the  condition  of  future 
progress.1 

Such  a  recognition  of  the  essentially  social  nature  of  Words- 
worth's poetry  became  possible  only  when  critics  had  them- 
selves attained  to  a  point  of  view  something  like  that  of  the 
poet,  when  the  order  of  ideas  that  he  presented  had  become 
the  common  property  of  the  thinking  world.  But  Wordsworth 
was  himself  from  the  first  keenly  aware,  both  of  the  social  value 
of  the  type  of  character  that  he  presented  and  of  its  absolute  de- 
pendence on  conditions  essentially  like  those  in  which  it  had 
been  developed.  The  life  of  the  peasant-shepherd  offered  him 
1  La  Revolution  Franqaise  et  les  Voltes  Anglais,  ed.  1906,  p.  554-6. 


142    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

the  goal  toward  which  modern  civilization  must  move.  With 
the  physical,  economic,  and  moral  surroundings  of  the  shepherd- 
farmers  of  Cumberland  he  was  constantly  preoccupied.  His 
poems  and  letters  are  full  of  references  to  their  habits  and  condi- 
tions. They  are,  he  says,  writing  to  Fox  in  1801, "  small  indepen- 
dent proprietors  of  land,  here  called  statesmen,  men  of  respect- 
able education,  who  daily  labour  on  their  own  little  properties. 
.  .  .  Their  little  tract  of  land  serves  as  a  kind  of  permanent  ral- 
lying point  for  their  domestic  feelings,  as  a  tablet  upon  which 
they  are  written,  which  makes  them  objects  of  memory  in  a 
thousand  instances,  when  they  would  otherwise  be  forgotten. 
It  is  a  fountain  fitted  to  the  nature  of  social  man,  from  which 
supplies  of  affection,  as  pure  as  his  heart  was  intended  for,  are 
daily  drawn."1  The  hardships  in  the  lives  of  these  men  were 
inevitable;  storm  and  solitude,  exposure  and  care,  were  their 
natural  lot.  But  toils  and  trials  seemed  to  Wordsworth  among 
the  conditions  of  human  happiness,  so  long  as  they  were  due 
to  the  nature  of  things  and  not  to  any  injustice  of  mankind,  and 
so  long  as  industrial  and  moral  independence,  the  centering  of 
affection  and  activity  in  his  home,  the  possession  of  the  little 
property  that  protected  him  from  the  utmost  uncertainty  and 
fear,  made  and  kept  the  worker  a  man.  The  social  and  eco- 
nomic circumstances  of  the  northern  peasant,  the  common  life 
of  the  little  community  in  which  he  had  seen  all  normal  varie- 
ties of  character  and  well-being,  thus  became  for  the  poet  the 
prototype  of  the  later  state,  a  state  marked  by  slight  differences 
in  material  possession,  and  giving  to  all  its  citizens  the  oppor- 
tunity for  that  stern  naturalness  and  morality  of  character 
which  he  judged  to  be  the  very  cornerstone  of  happiness. 

But  the  circumstances  of  the  Westmoreland  shepherd- 
farmer  did  more  than  give  Wordsworth  the  ideal  of  the  true 
state:  they  formed  the  standard  by  which  he  judged,  often 
narrowly  but  always  with  some  touch  of  deep  wisdom,  the 
changes  going  on  in  the  England  of  the  early  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. For  though  it  still  actually  existed  in  a  part  of  England, 
1  Letter  to  Charles  James  Fox,  January  14, 1801. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    143 

the  world  that  Wordsworth  had  known  in  his  youth  was  even 
there  threatened  with  the  economic  and  moral  disintegration 
everywhere  following  the  introduction  of  machinery  and  the 
establishment  of  the  modern  industrial  system.  These  great 
economic  changes,  whose  outcome  is  still  hidden  from  our 
eyes,  affected  him  profoundly,  and  forced  him  constantly  to 
apply  to  shifting  social  conditions  those  convictions  as  to  the 
nature  and  life  of  man  which  he  had  formulated  during  the 
years  following  the  French  Revolution.  It  was  characteristic 
of  his  faithful  observation  of  the  facts  of  the  social  as  of  the 
natural  world  that  he  was,  from  the  first,  aware  of  the  tremen- 
dous powers  for  good  and  evil  at  work  in  the  industrial  civiliza- 
tion which  during  his  lifetime  was  transforming  England.  "An 
inventive  Age,"  he  says, 

"Has  wrought,  if  not  with  speed  of  magic,  yet 
To  most  strange  issues."  ' 

The  Wanderer  pictures  the  change  which  he  has  seen  pass  over 
the  face  of  the  country :  — 

"  From  the  germ 
Of  some  poor  hamlet,  rapidly  produced 
Here  a  huge  town,  continuous  and  compact, 
Hiding  the  face  of  earth  for  leagues  —  and  there, 
Where  not  a  habitation  stood  before, 
Abodes  of  men  irregularly  massed 
Like  trees  in  forests,  —  spread  through  spacious  tracts, 
O  'er  which  the  smoke  of  unremitting  fires 
Hangs  permanent,  and  plentiful  as  wreaths 
Of  vapor  glittering  in  the  morning  sun."  2 

He  sees  the  barren  wilderness  "erased  or  disappearing,"  "the 
wide  sea  peopled"  with  the  wonders  of  English  merchandise; 
he  rejoices  in  the  martial  power  hence  accruing  to 

"the  blessed  Isle, 
Truth's  consecrated  residence,  the  seat 
Impregnable  of  Liberty  and  Peace."  3 

This  was  the  outer  and  glorious  aspect  of  the  new  England, 
these  were  the  transformations  on  which  the  material  and  sci- 
1  The  Excursion,  vm,  87-9.  2  Ibid.,  118-27.  3  Ibid.,  145-7. 


144    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

entific  hopes  of  the  century  were  founded.  But  Wordsworth, 
rejoicing  in  his  country's  prosperity  yet  looking  also  on  the 
darker  side  of  the  great  change  which  it  was  undergoing,  saw 
clearly  "the  baneful  effects  arising  out  of  an  ill-regulated  and 
excessive  application  of  powers  so  admirable  in  themselves,"  1 
but  so  essentially  inhuman  in  the  hands  of  ignorance  and 
greed;  and,  beholding  in  the  new  industrial  conditions 

"Such  outrage  done  to  nature  as  compels 
The  indignant  power  to  justify  herself; 
Yea,  to  avenge  her  violated  rights, 
For  England's  bane,"  2 

never  ceased  to  insist  on  the  rights  of  life  itself  in  the  vast  in- 
crease of  the  machinery  of  living,  or  to  declare  the  necessity  of 
sympathetic  and  intelligent  guidance  if  society  were  to  maintain 
its  stability  against  dangers  that  threatened  its  very  existence. 
Wordsworth  was,  of  course,  but  one  among  the  many  who,  in 
the  early  decades  of  the  nineteenth  century,  saw  the  necessity  of 
bringing  order  out  of  the  chaos  of  English  life.  Efforts  to  rem- 
edy the  crying  industrial  evils  of  the  time  were  perhaps  the 
most  hopeful  signs  of  the  years  in  which  he  was  ardently  pro- 
pounding his  social  creed.  There  were,  from  the  very  beginning 
of  the  century,  constant  attempts,  slowly  leading  to  some 
measure  of  success,  to  regulate  the  industry  of  factory-workers 
through  legislation,  to  improve  the  education  of  the  masses 
and  to  widen  its  scope,  to  reform  the  criminal  code  and  the 
poor  laws,  to  help  both  manufacturers  and  laborers  by  the 
extension  and  equalization  of  the  suffrage.  Theorists  were  as 
busy  as  practical  reformers:  Coleridge  was  suggesting  a  social 
philosophy  based  on  an  organic  conception  of  society;  Ben- 
tham,  in  the  name  of  reason,  was  attacking  existing  abuses 
and  demanding  their  immediate  reform.  The  political  econo- 
mists, absorbed  in  explaining  the  conditions  of  a  production 
identified  with  material  prosperity,  were  fast  coming  to  a  sense 
of  the  moral  issues  involved  in  what  had  at  first  seemed  purely 
economic  questions.  Owen's  notable  experiment  in  coopera- 
1  Note  on  The  Excursion,  vm,  111-12.       2  The  Excursion,  vni,  153-6. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    145 

tive  production  in  New  Lanark  in  1817  was  the  most  con- 
spicuous of  several  tentative  efforts  to  apply  to  men's  business 
relations  conceptions  more  ethical  and  more  democratic  than 
the  new-old  declaration  of  the  right  of  strength  to  its  own. 
And  perhaps  more  significant  than  any  of  these  movements 
was  the  attainment  by  the  workingmen  of  England,  through 
unspeakable  suffering  and  struggle  in  the  first  third  of  the 
century,  of  the  right  to  form  combinations  of  labor  and  freely 
to  discuss  their  grievances. 

It  was  with  this  growth  of  social  consciousness  and  power 
among  the  workers  themselves  —  though  he  might  never 
have  acknowledged  the  relation  —  that  Wordsworth's  work 
was  most  vitally  connected.  For  he  saw  the  goal  toward 
which,  however  unconscious  of  their  end,  the  toilers  of  Eng- 
land were  moving;  and  it  was  certainly  he  who  in  those  early 
years  gave  most  adequate  expression  to  their  dimly  felt  sense 
that  they  must  vindicate  for  the  mass  of  men  the  "sacred 
claims"  of  human  life.  He  believed,  it  is  true,  that  their  goal 
was  to  be  reached  only  when  no 

"false  conclusions  of  the  reasoning  power 
Made  the  eye  blind,  and  closed  the  passages 
Through  which  the  ear  converses  with  the  heart"; l 

and  this  deep-rooted  distrust  of  reason  and  all  its  works  often 
made  his  views  on  particular  questions  to  the  last  degree 
reactionary.  But  in  years  of  darkness  he  never  lost  sight  of 
the  main  issue,  the  guarding  and  enriching  of  human  life, 
whether  that  life  was  threatened  by  the  collapse  of  a  great  hope 
or  by  the  magnitude  of  its  own  control  over  nature.  Among 
the  poets  he  thus  became  the  first  of  the  spiritual  seers  of  the 
new  democracy,  blazing  the  path  which  Shelley,  Swinburne, 
Emerson,  and  Whitman  were  to  follow  further  than  he. 

Wordsworth  never  wavered  in  his  belief  that  the  measure  of 

national  prosperity  lay  in  the  moral  energy  of  its  people;  that 

the  one  test  of  a  nation's  wealth  was  its  power  to  create  and 

diffuse  the  greatest  amount  of  happiness.   Anticipating  such 

1  The  Excursion,  iv,  1153-5. 


146    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

later  teachers  as  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  and  Morris  in  their  insis- 
tence on  a  moral,  industrial,  and  aesthetic  rather  than  a  politi- 
cal democracy,  he  was,  even  in  his  duller  years,  more  buoy- 
antly hopeful  than  they.  There  is  still  an  echo  of  the  large 
enthusiasm  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  his  refusal  to  see  any- 
thing that  could  prevent  the  fulfillment  of  the  social  hope  of 
humanity  where  nature  had  not  thrown  an  impassable  bar- 
rier in  the  way.  He  not  only  trusted  whole-heartedly  in 

"the  worth 
And  dignity  of  individual  man, 
No  composition  of  the  brain,  but  man 
Of  whom  we  read,  the  man  whom  we  behold 
With  our  own  eyes,"  * 

but  was  convinced  that  man  could  achieve  his  destiny  in  and 
through  the  ordinary  circumstances  of  life.  After  the  reestab- 
lishment  of  his  lost  faith,  he  inquired,  he  tells  us,  with  greater 
though  more  subdued  interest  than  before,  whether  the  almost 
universal  degradation  of  mankind  was  inevitable  —  that  is, 
whether  in  the  nature  of  things  there  lay  any  reason  for  the 
pitiful  condition  of  the  race.  Describing  the  truly  humane 
man,  he  asks,  — 

"Why  is  this  glorious  creature  to  be  found 
One  only  in  ten  thousand?  What  one  is, 
Why  may  not  millions  be?  What  bars  are  thrown 
By  Nature  in  the  way  of  such  a  hope? 
Our  animal  appetites  and  daily  wants, 
Are  these  obstructions  insurmountable?  "  * 

Once  started  on  this  quest,  he  soon  convinced  himself  that 

the  evils  under  which  the  world  was  groaning  lay  not  in  "boon 

nature"  herself,  but  in  the  conditions  that  man  has  made  for 

man.    By  studying  the  lives  of  the  poor,  by  inspecting  "the 

basis  of  the  social  pile,"  he  saw  the  "mental  power  and  genuine 

virtue"  on  which  true  prosperity  depends  manifested  among 

those  who  live 

"By  bodily  toil,  labour  exceeding  far 
Their  due  proportion,  under  all  the  weight 
Of  that  injustice  which  upon  ourselves 
Ourselves  entail."  3 

1  The  Prelude,  xm,  80^.  2  Ibid.,  87-92.  3  Ibid.,  97-100. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    147 

The  nobility  and  heroism  of  the  poor,  the  happiness  existing 
where  nature  lends  herself  to  the  production  of  character  and 
joy,  were  thus  his  warrant  for  believing  that  mankind  as  a  whole 
might  reach  the  full  state  of  human  perfection  and  enjoy  the 
full  measure  of  human  happiness.  Nor  was  he  content  to 
preach  this  as  a  far-off  ideal;  the  "human  kindnesses  and 
simple  joys"  that  flourished  "among  the  natural  abodes  of 
man"  threw  into  sharp  relief  the  misery  of  the  workingmen  of 
England.  In  U:e  light  of  this  contrast,  the  vaunted  industrial 
prosperity  of  his  time  revealed  its  lurking  evils:  the  physical 
and  moral  degradation  that  followed  long  hours  of  work  in 
unhealthful  surroundings;  the  destruction  of  any  true  home- 
life  where  fathers  were  forced  to  idleness  and  mothers  to  un- 
seasonable wage-earning;  above  all,  the  failure  of  the  very 
sources  of  life,  when  little  children,  driven  by  that  "  premature 
necessity  "  which  "preconsumes  the  reason,"  toiled  in  mine  or 
mill  until  by  excess  of  labor  the  very  lineaments  of  human- 
ity were  effaced,  until 

"liberty  of  mind 
Is  gone  for  ever;  and  this  organic  frame, 
So  joyful  in  its  motions,  is  become 
Dull,  to  the  joy  of  her  own  motions  dead."  * 

Wordsworth  by  no  means  limited  himself  to  poetry  in  the 
expression  of  his  social  and  political  interests :  from  the  time  of 
his  vigorous  protest  in  the  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Llandajf, 
there  is  hardly  a  subject  of  public  concern  on  which  he  does  not 
declare  himself  either  in  his  letters  or  by  some  effort  in  behalf  of 
his  principles.  He  is  reported  as  having  said  that  "although  he 
was  known  to  the  world  only  as  a  poet,  he  had  given  twelve 
hours'  thought  to  the  condition  and  prospects  of  society  for 
one  to  poetry." 2  More  than  this,  the  strength  and  fervency  of 
his  social  beliefs  urged  him  to  a  practical  activity  that  he  con- 
sidered at  times  detrimental  to  his  work  as  a  poet.  Convinced 
as  strongly  as  Godwin  that  the  science  of  politics  is  in  the 

1  The  Excursion,  vm,  321-4. 

2  William  Knight,  Life  of  Wordsworth,  ed.  1889,  vol.  in,  p.  238. 


148    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

last  issue  a  moral  science,  lie  was  indefatigable  in  his  attempts 
to  bring  the  social  and  political  policies  of  England  to  the  test 
of  ethical  principles.  The  story  of  his  application  of  these  prin- 
ciples to  practical  matters  is,  it  is  true,  in  some  ways  rather 
sorry  reading.  In  spite  of  his  underlying  faith  in  humanity  he 
utterly  failed  to  recognize  the  greatness  of  the  democratic 
movement  of  his  day  or  the  beneficent  forces  at  work  among 
the  masses  of  the  people;  he  is  reported  to  have  said,  in  1833, 
that  "he  saw  nothing  but  darkness,  disorder,  and  misery  in  the 
immediate  prospect";  and  again,  for  all  his  trust  in  unspoiled 
human  nature,  he  declared  that  he  had  "no  confidence  in  the 
body  of  the  people,  in  their  willingness  to  read  what  is  whole- 
some, or  to  do  what  is  right."  * 

But  though  such  inconsistencies  separated  him  from  much 
that  was  good  in  his  time  and  led  to  many  mistaken  judgments, 
he  yet  rendered  the  cause  of  democracy  an  inestimable  service 
by  the  constancy  of  his  appeal  to  certain  fundamental  truths 
which,  though  out  of  favor  for  the  moment,  were  essential  to 
the  future  development  of  England.  John  Stuart  Mill  once 
said  to  a  radical  friend,  "Wordsworth  ...  is  against  you,  no 
doubt,  in  the  battle  which  you  are  now  waging,  but  after  you 
have  won,  the  world  will  need  more  than  ever  those  qualities 
which  Wordsworth  is  keeping  alive  and  nourishing."2  But  not 
only  was  it  the  glory  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  to  nourish  in  an 
age  overwhelmingly  materialistic  the  moral  and  emotional  quali- 
ties on  which  progress  ultimately  depends;  in  spite  of  his  blind- 
ness to  many  of  the  nobler  elements  in  contemporary  thought, 
his  dogged  application  of  ideas  to  practical  matters,  narrow  as 
it  often  was,  did  much  to  show  the  inadequacy  of  the  short 
cuts  to  reform  which  satisfied  men  bent  on  achieving  personal 
success  equally  with  social  good,  or  hoping  for  permanent  im- 
provement in  the  conditions  of  mankind  from  partial  material 
and  political  changes.  If  in  some  respects  Wordsworth  asked 
less  than  the  liberal  thinkers  of  his  day,  in  others  his  demands 

1  William  Knight,  Life  of  Wordsworth,  ed.  1889,  vol.  in,  pp.  240-1. 
1  John  Morley,  Critical  Miscellanies,  ed.  1898,  vol.  in,  pp.  49-50. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    149 

went  far  beyond  their  dreams;  if,  for  instance,  he  distrusted 
the  power  of  school-training  and  the  possession  of  the  ballot 
to  make  the  world  a  much  better  place  to  live  in,  he  never 
ceased  to  insist  that  the  mass  of  men,  if  they  are  to  be  truly 
good  or  happy,  must  enjoy  an  industrial  and  moral  indepen- 
dence that  could  be  attained  only  by  the  most  thorough-going 
economic  reforms. 

The  social  radicalism  existing  under  Wordsworth's  superfi- 
cial conservatism  appeared  very  clearly  in  his  ideas  of  democ- 
racy. In  many  passages  he  declared  himself  against  what  he 
considered  the  discredited  doctrine  of  equality;  yet  while  he 
thus  renounced  a  cardinal  democratic  doctrine  he  went  far  be- 
*  yond  most  radicals  of  his  day  in  demanding  for  every  man  the 
right,  not  to  a  liberty,  as  he  thought,  against  nature,  but  to  the 
full  development  of  his  powers  and  hence  to  a  moderate  and 
moral  happiness.  This  claim  of  the  many  to  consideration  and 
opportunity,  which  rested  ultimately  on  his  professed  convic- 
tion of  the  dignity  of  human  life  as  such,  remained  no  merely 
academic  or  metaphysical  principle,  but  was  unremittingly 
applied  to  the  consideration  of  practical  problems.  Nowhere 
does  the  logic  with  which  he  persistently  urged  it  appear  more 
strikingly  than  in  his  discussion  of  the  Poor  Laws.  Basing  his 
argument  on  the  principle  that  every  one  is  entitled  to  the 
full  and  happy  exercise  of  his  abilities,  he  declared  it  to  be  the 
duty  of  the  state  to  provide  for  all  its  citizens,  not  only  em- 
ployment but  the  kind  of  employment  that  was  suited  to  their 
individual  needs  and  capacities.  This  declaration  of  a  duty  of 
government  and  of  a  right  of  its  members  which  society  is  still 
far  from  admitting  was  accompanied,  or  balanced,  by  a  very 
firm  insistence  on  the  limited  wants  and  desires  of  the  mass  of 
men. 

A  good  illustration  of  his  point  of  view,  non-sentimental  yet 
extremely  radical,  is  seen  in  his  attitude  toward  the  oppor- 
tunities for  recreation  that  should  be  open  to  the  workingmen 
of  England.  These  opportunities  he  would  have  closely  asso- 
ciated with  their  daily  life,  affirming  that  workingmen,  like 


150    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

other  human  beings,  can  enter  into  their  aesthetic  heritage 
only  by  living  in  the  midst  of  healthful,  well-ordered,  and 
beautiful  surroundings;  and  that  occasional  and  promiscuous 
pleasure-seeking,  even  in  the  face  of  the  most  picturesque 
scenes,  can  do  nothing  to  strengthen  their  sense  of  beauty  or 
to  form  their  moral  being.  True  to  these  principles,  he  actively 
opposed  the  building  of  the  Kendal  and  Windermere  railroad, 
by  means  of  which  it  was  proposed  to  open  up  the  Lake  Coun- 
try to  the  inhabitants  of  Carlisle  and  Leeds.  The  promoters  of 
the  scheme  urged  in  its  behalf  that  it  would  enable  the  work- 
ingmen  of  those  cities  to  share  in  all  the  ennobling  influences 
of  the  most  romantic  scenery  of  England,  and  Wordsworth,  in 
arguing  against  them,  dwells  hardly  more  on  the  injury  to  the 
natural  beauty  of  the  country  and  the  injustice  to  its  inhabi- 
tants of  destroying  this  beauty,  than  on  the  absolute  failure 
of  occasional  and  hurried  visits  to  the  country  to  give  the 
refined  taste  and  the  higher  pleasure  popularly  supposed  to 
result  from  intercourse  with  nature.  In  his  main  argument, 
he  tried  "to  prove  that  the  perception  of  what  has  acquired 
the  name  of  picturesque  and  romantic  scenery  is  so  far  from 
being  intuitive,  that  it  can  be  produced  only  by  a  slow  and 
gradual  process  of  culture;  and  to  show,  as  a  consequence, 
that  the  humbler  ranks  of  society  are  not,  and  cannot  be,  in  a 
state  to  gain  material  benefit  from  a  more  speedy  access  than 
they  now  have  to  this  beautiful  region."  * 

But  though  he  would  make  no  sacrifice  to  bestow  on  those 
not  ready  to  profit  by  it  a  gift  beyond  their  reach,  Words- 
worth contended  that  in  their  daily  life  the  poor  should  find 
opportunity  for  the  aesthetic  development  and  satisfaction  of 
which  they  were  capable.  In  the  love  of  nature  as  in  all  else,  he 
recognized  that  use  and  wont  are  all  but  omnipotent,  that 
ordinary  men  enjoy  what  they  know  well,  or  at  least  what  is 
linked  by  every  association  to  their  material  well-being  and 
sense  of  happiness,  —  green  fields,  clear  blue  skies,  running 
streams  of  pure  water,  rich  groves  and  woods,  orchards,  and 
1  Letter  to  the  Morning  Post,  Dec.  17, 1844. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    151 

all  the  ordinary  varieties  of  rural  nature.  Familiarity  with 
such  scenes  as  these,  by  means  of  excursions  cheap  enough  to 
be  frequent,  or,  better,  by  the  Sunday  afternoon  rambles  of 
families  through  the  fields  surrounding  their  homes,  could,  he 
thought,  alone  profit  the  new  generation  of  operatives.  De- 
mands like  these  in  behalf  of  the  working-people  of  England, 
whether  for  their  steady  and  congenial  employment,  or  for 
healthful  and  beautiful  surroundings,  far  outran  the  demo- 
cratic conceptions  of  Wordsworth's  day;  few  of  his  contempo- 
raries, however  sincere  their  desire  for  reform,  guessed  that 
democracy,  if  it  meant  anything,  meant  the  right  of  every  man 
to  opportunity  for  self-expression  in  the  occupation  through 
which  he  earned  his  daily  bread,  and  to  the  ordered  beauty  in 
his  environment  that  should  develop  his  moral  and  aesthetic 
faculties. 

In  these  discussions  of  social  matters,  a  familiar  doctrine  is, 
by  Wordsworth's  application  of  it,  brought  to  a  conclusion 
more  radical  than  could  be  accepted  by  his  age.  A  similar 
change  from  an  old  order  of  thought  to  a  new  is  evident  in  his 
theories  of  education,  a  subject  on  which  he  has  first  and  last 
left  many  expressions  of  opinion.  The  determining  element  in 
these  theories  was  the  belief  in  a  natural  simplicity  of  living 
which  he  and  his  contemporaries  owed  to  Rousseau;  but  that 
belief  was  itself  deeply  modified  both  by  its  interpretation 
through  social  conditions  actually  existing  in  the  Cumberland 
mountains  and  by  a  faith  in  the  essential  goodness  of  men 
to  which  Rousseau,  for  all  his  reforming  zeal,  had  only  par- 
tially attained.  The  result  was  an  entire  change  of  empha- 
sis on  the  importance  for  the  child  of  what  Wordsworth  calls 
"  tuition,"  or  school  instruction,  the  training  of  the  school 
being  as  nothing  when  set  over  against  the  broader  dis- 
cipline of  circumstances.  Wordsworth  himself  had  gained 
relatively  so  little  from  the  foolishness  of  teaching,  so  much 
from  the  natural  exercise  of  his  own  faculties,  that  it  was  easy 
for  him  to  believe  in  the  self-developing  power  of  the  mind  and 
in  the  comparative  worthlessness  of  any  methodized  intellec- 


152    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

tual  training.  Taught  by  his  own  experience,  he  demanded  as 
the  first  condition  of  education  a  large  share  of  independence 
for  the  pupil  and  the  free  play  of  his  emotions  and  imagina- 
tion as  well  as  of  his  intellect.  Among  the  blessings  of  his 
own  childhood  he  reckoned  as  second  only  to  his  unrestrained 
life  with  nature  and  his  herding  with  "a  race  of  real  chil- 
dren," 1  his  freedom  to  wander,  "in  the  season  of  unperilous 
choice,"  2  at  his  will  among  books;  and  scorn  is  mingled  with 
his  pity  for  the  "model  of  a  child"  3  who,  ever  forced  to  prema- 
ture knowledge  by 

"Some  intermeddler  ...  on  the  watch 
To  drive  him  back,  and  pound  him,  like  a  stray, 
Within  the  pinfold  of  his  own  conceit,"  4 

must  purchase  an  untimely  wisdom  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  mys- 
terious powers  of  growth.5  His  opposition  to  the  popular  ped- 
agogic systems  of  the  day,  by  which  children  were  kept  in 
perpetual  tutelage,  found  concrete  expression  in  his  dislike  of 
children's  books  and  of  any  prescription  or  oversight  of  their 
reading;  in  his  claim  that  natural  scenery  surrounding  the 
child  and  associated  with  his  spontaneous  activities  and  amuse- 
ments was  one  of  the  great  elements  of  culture;  and  in  his 
demand  for  a  training  that  would  teach  a  few  things  well.  In 
his  letters  and  obiter  dicta  on  educational  matters  the  ideas 
incorporated  in  the  story  of  his  own  childhood  were  repeated 
again  and  again.  It  was  on  them  that  he  based,  not  only  his 
condemnation  of  current  ideals  of  teaching,  but  his  conviction 
that  a  genuine  and  universal  education  would  in  great  part 
remedy  the  social  evils  under  which  Europe  was  suffering.  He 
had,  indeed,  no  stronger  belief  than  that  any  advance  in  civil- 
ization must  be  founded  on  a  discipline  that  would  rightly  in- 
form the  minds  of  all  classes ;  he  declared  that  Europe  needed  a 
new  and  vital  education  far  more  than  she  needed  new  laws  or 
new  armies,  and  he  steadfastly  insisted  on  the  duty  of  England 

1  The  Prelude,  v,  408-11.  2  Ibid.,  234.  »  Ibid.,  299. 

4  Ibid.,  334-6.  6  Ibid.,  425. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    153 

to  teach  her  people.   In  words  more  exact  than  poetic,  he  ex- 
pressed his  longings  for 

"...  the  coming  of  that  glorious  time 
When,  prizing  knowledge  as  her  noblest  wealth 
And  best  protection,  this  imperial  Realm, 
While  she  exacts  allegiance,  shall  admit 
An  obligation,  on  her  part,  to  teach 
Them  who  are  born  to  serve  her  and  obey; 
Binding  herself  by  statute  to  secure 
For  all  the  children  whom  her  soil  maintains 
The  rudiments  of  letters,  and  inform 
The  mind  with  moral  and  religious  truth, 
Both  understood  and  practised,  —  so  that  none, 
However  destitute,  be  left  to  droop 
By  timely  culture  unsustained;  or  run 
Into  a  wild  disorder;  or  be  forced 
To  drudge  through  a  weary  life  without  the  help 
Of  intellectual  implements  and  tools; 
A  savage  horde  among  the  civilised, 
A  servile  band  among  the  lordly  free!"  l 

All  Wordsworth's  reflections  on  education  were  colored  by 
his  belief  that  it  should  prepare  for  life,  and  that,  for  the 
great  majority,  it  must,  however  deeply  and  genuinely  hu- 
man, be  limited  by  the  necessities  of  the  hand-worker.  The 
test  that  he  applied  to  any  given  education  was,  therefore,  its 
power  to  create  a  character  of  a  certain  type,  this  type  in  turn 
justifying  itself  by  its  function  in  the  larger  social  whole.  Try- 
ing their  results  by  this  test,  he  came  to  be  more  and  more  dis- 
trustful of  all  existing  methods  of  teaching.  Particularly 
characteristic  of  his  whole  point  of  view  were  his  changing 
judgments  of  Dr.  Bell's,  or  the  Madras,  system,  and  the  rea- 
sons for  which  he  finally  came  to  condemn  it.  This  system, 
much  and  long  talked-of,  was  an  interesting  attempt,  first 
made  in  schools  for  the  half-caste  English  boys  of  Madras, 
to  teach  the  younger  by  the  older  pupils,  and  thus  to  eliminate 
the  cheap  and  perfunctory  instruction  which  was  all  that  the 
schools  had  been  able  to  afford,  while  stimulating  the  sense 
of  honor  among  boys  extraordinarily  lacking  in  any  sort  of 
1  The  Excursion,  ix,  293-310. 


154    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

personal  morale  or  esprit  de  corps.  The  "system,"  besides 
being  economical,  seems  to  have  made  a  moral  appeal  to  the 
pupils  not  unlike  that  aimed  at  by  Doctor  Arnold  at  Rugby 
and  in  the  best  schools  and  reformatories  of  our  own  day.  It 
was  doubtless  because  of  the  thorough  learning  of  what  was 
learned  at  all,  of  the  relative  freedom  and  independence  of 
the  children,  and  of  the  moral  discipline  claimed  for  it,  that 
Wordsworth  for  a  time  inclined  to  believe  in  it.  In  the  early 
years  of  the  century  he  enthusiastically  advocated  it,  declaring 
in  a  letter  to  Thomas  Poole  in  1815,  that  "next  to  the  art  of 
printing"  it  was  "the  noblest  invention  for  the  improvement 
of  the  human  species."  l  But  he  came  in  the  end  to  question 
its  usefulness  and  to  deprecate  any  general  adoption  of  it, 
not  only  because  he  thought  it  impossible  that  any  system 
whatsoever  could  be  applied  to  conditions  so  various  as  those 
of  England,  but  because  this  particular  system  asserted  an 
ideal  of  equality  that  he  considered  essentially  wrong;  because 
it  overtrained  the  intellect  while  leaving  untouched  the  spirit- 
ual and  perceptive  faculties;  and,  above  all,  because  emulation 
was  its  master-spring,  "the  great  wheel  which  puts  every  part 
of  the  machine  into  motion."  2 

But  emphasis  on  practical,  moral,  and  spiritual  values  easily 
turns  into  an  arrogant  anti-intellectualism,  and  Wordsworth's 
theories  of  education,  vital  and  suggestive  as  they  were,  did 
not  escape  the  narrow  and  reactionary  tendencies  of  his  thought. 
Nowhere  is  this  more  evident  than  in  his  objection  to  the  in- 
troduction of  the  Madras  system  into  the  girls'  schools  of  Am- 
bleside and  the  surrounding  region.  Here  he  retreated  frankly 
to  a  romantic  past,  calling  "Shenstone's  school-mistress,  by 
her  winter  fire  and  in  her  summer  garden-seat,"  to  witness 
against  "Dr.  Bell's  sour-looking  teachers  in  petticoats."3  In 
the  training  of  girls  he  would  entirely  subordinate  individual 
opportunities  to  the  necessities  or  convenience  of  the  com- 

1  Letter  to  Thomas  Poole,  March  13,  1815. 

a  Letter  to  Hugh  James  Rose,  1828  (?). 

8  Letter  to  Hugh  James  Rose,  December  11,  1828. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    155 

munity.  "What,"  he  says,  "is  the  use  of  pushing  on  the  edu- 
cation of  girls  so  fast?  .  .  .  What  are  you  to  do  with  these 
girls?  What  demand  is  there  for  the  ability  that  they  may 
have  prematurely  acquired?  Will  they  not  be  indisposed  to 
bend  to  any  kind  of  hard  labour  or  drudgery?  "  !  In  an  address 
delivered  in  1836  at  the  foundation  of  a  school  at  Bowness,  he 
further  supported  his  position  by  an  appeal  to  the  judgment 
of  parents,  who,  he  said,  were  agreed  that  the  training  of  girls 
should  be  "confined  to  reading,  writing  and  arithmetic,  and 
plain  needle-work,  or  any  other  art  favorable  to  economy  and 
home-comforts."  2 

Such  standards  as  these  for  the  education  of  any  class  of 
workers  seem  at  first  sight  wholly  reactionary:  they  would 
limit  the  growth  of  the  future  by  a  state  of  society  and  a  type 
of  character  that  were  the  outcome  of  past  conditions.  Yet 
narrow  and  narrowing  as  his  ideas  tended  to  become  in  practi- 
cal application,  WTordsworth  was  among  the  foremost  thinkers 
of  his  time  in  considering  education  not  as  an  end  in  itself  or 
as  a  means  to  personal  power,  but  as  conditioned  by  the  needs 
and  aims  of  the  society  of  which  it  forms  a  part.  He  con- 
demned the  purely  intellectual  training  of  the  schools,  not 
only  because  of  its  one-sided  over  development  of  certain 
faculties,  but  because  it  failed  to  meet  any  social  test.  He 
constantly  insisted  upon  the  solidarity  of  the  family  in  aim 
and  interest,  not  only  because  he  believed  the  educative  power 
of  the  primal  duties  and  responsibilities  to  be  infinitely  greater 
than  any  that  could  come  from  mere  school-training,  but  be- 
cause the  welfare  of  the  family,  the  elementary  social  unit  and 
the  centre  of  men's  deepest  affection,  seemed  to  him  doubly 
essential  to  the  welfare  of  society.  There  was  inevitably  in 
Wordsworth's  position  some  exaggeration  of  the  truth  for  which 
he  stood :  protesting  against  a  general  tendency  "to  sacrifice  the 
greater  power  to  the  less;  all  that  life  and  nature  teach,  to  the 

1  Letter  to  Hugh  James  Rose,  December  11,  1828. 

2  Speech  on  Laying  the  Foundation-Stone  of  the  New  School  in  the  Village 
of  Bowness,  Windermere,  1836. 


156    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

little  that  can  be  learned  from  books  and  a  master,"  l  he  was 
too  ready  to  forget  the  gain  to  society  from  the  fuller  develop- 
ment of  the  individual;  he  would  ensure  to  the  parents  the 
education  of  responsibility  for  their  children  even  when  this 
responsibility  entailed  hardship  and  suffering,  but  if  the  child's 
growth  in  knowledge  became  in  any  degree  unfavorable  to  the 
"tenderness  of  domestic  life,"  he  was  willing  to  refuse  it  op- 
portunities for  education. 

Yet  remorseless  as  was  this  sacrifice  of  the  individual  to 
the  community,  it  was  exacted  by  Wordsworth  in  the  belief 
that  only  through  such  sacrifice  could  the  individual  attain  to 
that  highly  developed  moral  and  emotional  life  in  which  his 
happiness  must  consist  and  by  which  must  be  tested  every 
intellectual  achievement  as  well  as  every  material  gain. 
Wordsworth's  ideas  on  the  education  of  the  school  are  wholly 
consistent  with  his  conception  of  the  social  function  of  know- 
ledge. Of  knowledge  as  an  end  in  itself  he  thought  little; 
he  considered  it  to  be  but  one,  and  that  by  no  means  the 
most  important,  of  the  elements  that  make  for  sanity  and 
happiness.  The  power  to  read  he  regarded  as  chiefly  desir- 
able to  those  in  need  of  more  stimulus  and  variety  than  were 
offered  by  their  daily  lives.  He  was  skeptical  as  to  its  ad- 
vantages to  a  rural  community,  in  which  constant  and  various 
occupations,  familiarity  with  friends,  and  intercourse  with  na- 
ture leave  men  neither  time  nor  desire  for  reading;  but  he  con- 
sidered, on  the  other  hand,  that  well-chosen  books  were  abso- 
lutely necessary  to  the  happiness  of  factory-workers,  a  class  of 
men  whose  lives  were  monotonous  in  activity,  who  were  them- 
selves restless  from  constant  liability  to  change,  and  whose 
conditions  of  living  permitted  only  a  relatively  empty  and 
uninteresting  leisure.  The  "select  library"  that  Wordsworth 
would  allow  them  provides  in  such  a  case  both  the  variety  that 
the  countryman  finds  in  his  daily  occupation  and  the  steady- 
ing influence  so  necessary  in  unsettling  and  unnatural  condi- 
tions; it  might,  he  said,  if  it  served  no  further  purpose,  "be  of 
1  Letter  to  Hugh  James  Rose,  1828(F). 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    157 

the  same  use  as  a  public  dial,  keeping  everybody's  clock  in 
some  kind  of  order."  * 

But  though  Wordsworth  hoped  little  from  the  populariza- 
tion of  knowledge,  he  saw  that  it  would  inevitably  go  on.  "The 
schoolmaster,"  he  wrote,  "is,  and  will  remain,  abroad.  The 
thirst  of  knowledge  is  spreading  and  will  spread,  whether  vir- 
tue and  duty  go  along  with  it  or  no." 2  The  schoolmaster  has 
multiplied  in  the  land,  as  Wordsworth  prophesied,  and  in  work- 
ing out  the  problems  of  a  democratic  education,  has  come  to 
recognize  the  truth  of  every  principle  on  which  Wordsworth 
insisted.  An  almost  purely  intellectual  training  is  yielding,  as 
we  test  it  by  the  demands  of  real  life,  to  one  giving  physical 
and  aesthetic  culture  as  well;  as  we  gain  a  deeper  sense  of  social 
solidarity,  we  are  trying  to  educate  our  school-children, 
whether  or  not  we  prepare  them  directly  to  earn  their  living, 
to  bear  their  part  in  the  society  in  which  they  are  to  live; 
taught  by  our  failure  to  deal  with  them  in  masses,  we  are  be- 
ginning to  see  the  primary  importance  of  developing  to  the 
utmost  independence  and  individuality  of  character  in  the 
schoolroom.  Gradually  we  are  coming  to  realize  the  value  of 
Wordsworth's  definition,  at  once  conservative  and  radical,  of 
the  function  of  the  school  in  the  community.  Consistently  as- 
serting the  power  of  education  to  mould  and  elevate  society, 
he  yet  refused  to  see  in  it  the  panacea  for  all  social  ills.  The 
school  is,  he  insisted,  though  perhaps  the  most  important  part 
of  the  community,  yet  but  a  part  of  it,  and  as  such  totally  in- 
adequate to  carry  on  the  work  of  the  larger  social  whole.  Not 
by  falsely  magnifying  its  office  but  by  a  wise  regulation  of 
all  the  life-processes  of  society  can  the  community  attain  to 
genuine  happiness.  The  partial  good  obtained  through  educa- 
tion might  even,  he  thought,  be  in  the  end  injurious,  if,  by 
palliating  evils,  it  distracted  attention  from  conditions  inimi- 
cal to  social  well-being.  The  infant  schools  of  his  day,  for  ex- 
ample, which  cared  for  children  while  their  mothers  worked  in 

1  Letter  to  Francis  Wrangham,  June  5,  1808. 

2  Letter  to  Hugh  James  Rose,  1828  (?). 


158    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

factories  or  elsewhere  for  the  support  of  the  family,  he  judged 
to  be  in  the  first  instance  symptoms  of  a  widespread  distress 
and  of  a  universally  unsettled  industrial  condition;  but  they 
seemed  to  him  positively  pernicious  in  so  far  as  they  concealed 
the  need  for  fundamental  and  most  difficult  reforms  of  the  con- 
ditions which  had  produced  them.  The  attempt  to  define  the 
function  of  education,  evident  both  in  the  demand  for  a  truly 
social  training  and  in  the  limitation  of  that  training  to  a  defi- 
nite field,  was  parallel  in  its  special  sphere  with  Wordsworth's 
promulgation  of  an  ideal  of  character  and  society  based  on  the 
elementary  virtues  and,  for  the  moment,  limited  to  them.  The 
claims  of  education  were  shorn  of  many  pretensions,  and  its  work 
was  for  the  time  being  narrowly  circumscribed.  But  the  function 
assigned  it,  however  modest,  was  essential,  and  allowed  for  a 
development  undreamed  of  by  the  conservative  Wordsworth. 
Though  Wordsworth's  occasional  utterances  on  public  ques- 
tions may  be  discredited  as  those  of  a  layman,  there  can  be 
no  question  that  when  he  spoke  of  the  nature  of  poetry  it  was 
as  a  master  in  his  own  field.  His  few  pages  of  criticism  are 
for  imaginative  insight  and  grasp  of  aesthetic  principles  to  be 
compared  only  with  the  work  of  such  fellow-poets  as  Ben  Jon- 
son  and  Dryden  and  Coleridge.  They  are,  moreover,  as  truly 
the  outcome  of  his  social  philosophy  as  are  his  opinions  on  edu- 
cation or  the  Poor  Laws;  and  his  theory  of  poetry  is  thus  not 
merely  the  expression  of  an  artist  discussing  his  craft,  but  the 
formulation  of  a  poetics  of  democracy.  From  1798,  when  he 
announced  his  experiment  in  the  Advertisement  to  the  Lyrical 
Ballads,  Wordsworth  never  wavered  in  his  conviction,  either 
that  poetry  is  vitally  related  to  men's  social  life,  or  that  the 
ideal  society  is  essentially  that  in  which  his  own  imagina- 
tion had  been  nurtured.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  his  con- 
ceptions of  the  art  were  limited  by  taking  as  aim  and  measure 
of  its  possibilities  the  social  situation  which  existed  in  a 
single  small  corner  of  England.  But  constant  return  to  an 
actualized  experience  gave  substance  to  what  might  else  have 
been  empty  theory,  and  forced  him  to  clearer  perception  both 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    159 

of  the  essential  elements  of  poetry  and  of  the  modern  condi- 
tions in  which  it  might  develop. 

In  a  very  real  sense  Wordsworth  laid  down  no  new  principles 
of  poetry.  Great  critics  have  always  been  at  one  as  to  its  essen- 
tial nature,  have  invariably  recognized  as  its  basis  that  truth 
to  the  profoundest  human  experience  which  makes  it  a  force 
only  less  strong  than  life  itself.  Their  differences,  and  hence 
the  growth  of  our  body  of  aesthetic  conceptions,  lie  not  so  much 
in  disagreement  as  to  fundamental  principles  as  in  the  reinter- 
pretation  of  these  principles  through  a  new  understanding  of 
life  and  character.  The  inclusive  humanity  that  marked  the 
thought  and  aim  of  the  Revolution  was  the  ground  on  which 
rested  Wordsworth's  distinctive  contributions  to  the  theory  of 
poetry :  namely,  his  acceptance  of  the  universal  experiences  as 
the  material  of  poetry,  and  his  declaration  that  the  poet's 
power,  however  exceptional  in  degree,  was  one  in  kind  with 
that  of  his  fellow  men.  The  presentation  of  these  ideas  was, 
of  course,  beset  with  difficulties,  and  with  difficulties  only 
partially  overcome  by  Wordsworth.  Pioneers  of  thought  have 
always  to  deal  with  new  subject-matter  by  means  of  words 
and  classifications  primarily  intended  to  explain  past  con- 
ceptions. So  Wordsworth,  than  whom  no  one  could  have  a 
more  vital  conception  of  the  poet's  office,  described  the  lan- 
guage of  poetry,  in  the  vague  and  far-traveled  phrase  current 
in  his  time,  as  an  imitation  of  the  language  of  real  life,  thus 
coloring  his  idea  of  the  spiritual  incarnation  involved  in  a 
work  of  art  with  the  opposite  conception  of  it  as  a  tran- 
script or  copy  of  nature.  A  similar  ambiguity,  due  perhaps  to 
his  one-sided  appeal  to  the  intuitive  faculties,  appears  in  his 
occasional  awkward  and  superficial  classifications,  notably  in 
his  elaborately  drawn  and  futile  distinction  between  imagina- 
tion and  fancy.  And  the  clearness  and  adequacy  of  his  presen- 
tation were  hindered  by  a  certain  argumentativeness  of  tem- 
per, as  well  as  by  the  difficulty  of  finding  a  fit  medium  of 
expression.  Wordsworth  was  a  good  fighter,  and,  flaunting  a 
novel  idea  in  the  face  of  its  opponents,  he  could  not  but  over- 


160    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

emphasize  what  was  peculiar  in  his  tenets,  sometimes  to  the 
injury  of  his  own  cause. 

But  the  contradictions  into  which  the  difficulties  of  his  posi- 
tion led  him  were  superficial  and  accidental;  in  effect  he  not 
only  recognized  and  defined  the  forces  at  work  in  the  new 
poetry,  but  enriched  our  conceptions  of  them  by  his  finer  pene- 
tration into  their  nature  and  sources.  Like  Aristotle,  he  de- 
clared that  poetry,  an  art  dealing  directly  with  human  life  and 
character,  is  the  most  profound  and  philosophical  of  writing. 
But  true  to  the  best  thought  of  his  time,  he  recognized  as  the 
fitting  theme  of  poetry,  not  the  life  of  the  great,  but  the  life 
of  the  humble;  not  character  in  the  throes  of  a  hopeless 
struggle  with  fate  or  weakened  by  the  more  tragic  division  in 
its  own  elements,  but  character  serene  in  the  humility,  modera- 
tion, and  content  of  everyday  life.  The  world  in  which  Words- 
worth's heroes  appear  is  no  longer  the  world  of  Greek  myth, 
of  mediaeval  legend,  of  Elizabethan  romance,  of  Augustan  wit, 
but  the  daily  round  in  which  common  people  pursue  their 
common  duties  with  no  other  distinction  than  the  supreme 
glory  of  their  humanity.  Such  a  conception  of  the  solidarity  of 
men,  of  their  vital  community  in  interests  and  needs,  was  not 
peculiar  to  Wordsworth,  was  not  even  peculiar  to  the  demo- 
cratic thinkers  to  whose  party,  in  spite  of  his  superficial  con- 
servatism, he  essentially  belonged;  but  in  him  it  appears  in  one 
of  its  profoundest  and  most  modern  aspects,  as  conditioning  a 
theory  by  which  art  can  be  justified  only  in  so  far  as  it  exists 
for  and  by  the  people.  Wordsworth's  connection  with  the 
Romantic  thinkers  of  his  day  was  slight  enough ;  allied  to  them, 
if  at  all,  by  his  spiritual  sensitiveness  and  the  belief  in  an  or- 
ganic social  order,  he  yet,  by  his  genuine  knowledge  of  men 
and  belief  in  them,  made  human  and  democratic  the  trans- 
cendentalism and  the  worship  of  genius  which  led  most  of 
the  Romanticists  to  a  reactionary  individualism.  An  aesthetic 
theory  that  seems  more  than  obvious  to  readers  of  Tolstoi  and 
Maeterlinck  was  a  century  ago  a  landmark  in  the  development 
of  a  truly  social  philosophy  of  poetry. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    161 

Wordsworth's  definition  of  the  material  that  is  essentially 
poetic  involved  a  corresponding  change  in  the  conception  of 
the  poet's  nature  and  function.  To  the  critic  of  the  Ren- 
aissance the  poet  seemed  to  join  together  things  that  have  no 
connection  in  nature,  and  so  by  a  divine  act  of  imagination  to 
shape  new  and  beautiful  existences  in  which  ardent  or  weary 
spirits  may  rejoice;  to  the  later  seeker  after  law  he  appeared 
to  unite,  in  a  transcendent  work  of  art,  the  mysterious  inspira- 
tion that  separates  him  from  other  men  with  the  reason  that 
he  holds  in  common  with  them;  to  the  humanist  of  democracy 
he  is  for  the  first  time  "a  man  speaking  to  men,"  a  seer  whose 
revelation  of  fresh  realms  of  experience  is  possible,  because  his 
hearers,  however  mute  and  inglorious,  are  gifted  with  some 
share  of  the  imagination  which  grows  to  its  height  in  him.  The 
poet's  fit  audience  is  made  up,  not  of  the  "few  who  see  by  arti- 
ficial lights,"  *  but  of  the  many  "enriched" 

"  With  human  kindnesses  and  simple  joys."  2 

The  true  judges  of  poetic  excellence,  says  Wordsworth  in  a 
letter,  are  to  be  found  among  men  "who  lead  the  simplest 
lives,  and  those  most  according  to  nature;  men  who  have  never 
known  false  refinements,  wayward  and  artificial  desires,  false 
criticisms,  effeminate  habits  of  thinking  and  feeling,  or  who, 
having  known  these  things,  have  outgrown  them."  3  Such 
readers,  open  to  impressions  of  the  loftiest  thought  conveyed 
in  the  simplest  and  most  lifelike  language,  he  trusted  to  bring 
about  the  saner  and  fuller  living,  the  deeper  emotional  and 
moral  experience,  in  which  he  placed  his  hope  for  the  race. 
They  were  chiefly  to  be  found,  he  thought,  not  among  the 
refined  and  cultured,  but  among  children  and  the  workers  in 
cottages  and  fields,  in  whom  daily  experience  has  strengthened 
those  "inherent  and  indestructible  qualities  of  the  human 
mind" 4  which  alone  could  triumph  over  all  that  assailed  char- 
acter in  the  turbulent  years  when  he  wrote. 

1  The  Prelude,  xm,  210.  2  Ibid.,  119. 

3  Letter  to  John  Wilson,  date  undetermined. 

*  Preface  to  the  second  edition  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads. 


162    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

The  imagination  which  these  readers  shared  in  their  degree 
with  the  poet,  was  to  Wordsworth  supreme  in  the  intellectual 
hierarchy,  because  mystically  one  with  the  divine  power  mov- 
ing the  universe.  This  sense  of  the  vital  and  creative  nature  of 
the  imagination,  which  made  it  at  once  the  mightiest  and  most 
mysterious  of  the  forces  known  to  man,  was,  of  course,  no  more 
peculiar  to  Wordsworth  than  was  his  belief  in  the  poetic  capaci- 
ties of  humble  and  lowly  life;  a  constant,  and  sometimes  a 
dominating  element  in  earlier  thought,  it  was  especially  preva- 
lent at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when,  while  sci- 
entists and  novelists  were  turning  more  and  more  to  the  study 
of  common  things  and  people,  the  mystics  and  philosophers  of 
the  Romantic  school  were  delighting  to  see  in  the  unfathom- 
able activity  of  a  universal  and  divine  faculty  at  once  the  ex- 
planation of  existence  and  the  justification  of  a  capricious  or 
egoistic  individual  experience.  But  Wordsworth,  uniting,  per- 
haps unconsciously,  ideas  widely  separated  in  origin,  human- 
ized the  lofty  claims  which  he  made  for  the  poetic  function  by 
his  conception  of  the  essential  identity  of  the  poet  with  other 
men.  Nor  was  this  leveling  of  character  and  power  in  his  the- 
ory, any  more  than  in  his  poetry,  a  leveling  down.  The  imagin- 
ation, if  a  universal  gift,  was  yet  the  noblest  faculty  of  man; 
the  faculty  that  allied  humanity  most  closely  with  the  great 
creative  spirit  of  the  universe,  was  still  the  gift  of  the  lowliest 
of  the  sons  of  earth. 

The  greatness  of  Wordsworth  lies,  as  every  reader  knows, 
not  in  his  philosophy  but  in  his  poetry.  His  poetry,  however, 
was  inevitably  conditioned  by  his  philosophy.  Great  as  it  was, 
it  might  have  been  still  greater,  had  not  the  revelation  of  the 
new  world  of  the  future  that  gave  meaning  to  life  in  his  early 
years  been  too  quickly  staled  into  commonplace.  Wordsworth 
never  really  believed  in  the  dominant  forces  that  in  his  time 
were  working  for  righteousness;  and,  as  he  separated  himself 
more  and  more  from  the  current  of  the  age,  he  was  increas- 
ingly driven  to  emphasize  the  reactionary,  non-progressive 
elements  in  principles  capable  of  a  far-reaching  and  fruitful 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    163 

application.  What  was  productive  and  progressive  in  his 
thought,  instead  of  developing  through  the  years,  grew  more 
obscure  as  the  problems  of  practical  life  more  and  more  baffled 
his  attempts  at  solution.  Wordsworth  indeed  remained  true 
to  that  revelation  of  his  youth  that  had  brought  him  from  the 
house  of  bondage;  but  the  ideal  in  which  he  lived,  cut  off  from 
saving  contact  with  the  life  of  the  age,  hardened  into  a  certain 
pedantry  through  its  much  repetition.  His  optimism  came  in 
time  to  deserve  the  reproach,  so  often  bestowed  upon  it,  of 
facility,  narrowness,  unreality. 

This  early  stagnation  of  his  thinking,  and  the  gradual  decline 
of  his  poetic  and  intellectual  faculties,  is  the  result  of  the  real 
tragedy  of  Wordsworth's  life  —  his  failure  "to  abide  in  reason 
to  the  uttermost."  "For  the  modern  man,"  says  Professor 
Rebec,  "the  divorce  of  genius  and  reason  from  understanding 
is  not  genius  and  reason  liberated,  but  genius  and  reason  ren- 
dered just  so  far  perverse  or  null."  1  This  great  truth  Words- 
worth never  recognized.  M.  Legouis  has  pointed  out  the  evils 
that  may  possibly  have  grown  from  his  dependence  on  his  sis- 
ter during  the  period  of  his  restoration.  Sensitive  and  poetic, 
the  devoted  admirer  of  her  brother,  she  delighted  in  the  ex- 
quisite observation  and  feeling  of  his  poetry  while  stimulating 
him  not  at  all  to  the  severer  intellectual  disciplines.2  It  is  a 
hard  judgment  that  condemns  the  most  devoted  of  sisters  be- 
cause she  was  not  the  most  philosophic  of  friends;  and  we  have 
no  proof  in  Wordsworth's  history  that  under  any  influence  he 
could  have  transcended  the  limitations  that  actually  existed 
in  his  thought.  In  truth,  it  was  by  his  distrust  of  the  under- 
standing, that  he  paid  the  penalty  of  living  in  one  of  those 
great  eras  when  the  human  mind,  torn  up  by  the  roots,  must 
perish  or  make  what  shift  it  can  in  a  new  habitat.  Words- 
worth, forced  to  keep  faith  with  a  world  that  had  belied  its 
promise,  was  content  neither  to  reassert  his  earlier  belief  with 
Godwin,  nor  like  Byron  courageously  to  despair  in  the  ruin  of 

1  "Byron  and  Morals,"  International  Journal  of  Ethics,  October,  1903. 

2  La  Jeunesse  de  Wordsworth,  ed.  1896,  pp.  322-7. 


164    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

his  hopes,  nor  to  return  like  Shelley  with  unwearied  ardor  to 
the  field  of  battle,  nor  to  wander  with  Keats  into  new  lands  of 
beauty ;  in  the  wreck  of  hopes  and  creeds  he  was  compelled  by 
his  inner  nature  to  rediscover  the  world  of  human  life  that  he 
had  lost.  It  was  the  just  reward  of  his  unflinching  integrity 
that  he  entered  into  and  possessed  some  part  of  the  promised 
land.  But  his  possession  of  it  was  partial;  he  never  really  un- 
derstood the  nature  or  enjoyed  the  abundance  of  the  country 
in  which  he  dwelt.  Full  possession  and  mastery  of  it  was  to  be 
the  reward  of  those  workers  whose  pedestrian  thought  wrought 
out  the  earlier  dream  of  the  poet;  he,  having  seen  the  vision, 
had  no  energy  left  to  shape  the  world  in  its  image. 

"Vision  and  faith  must  come  back  from  their  flights,  and 
face  unflinchingly  the  remorseless  challenge  ...  of  thorough- 
going, grim  reason,"  says  the  writer  already  quoted.1  Words- 
worth was  at  first  able  to  meet  courageously  the  challenge 
of  facts;  but  facts  he  accepted  as  static  and  final,  never 
testing  them  by  that  "thorough-going,  grim  reason"  that 
leads  to  truth.  Never  of  those  who  reason,  he  revolted  finally 
from  the  service  of  the  understanding  when  he  threw  off  the 
yoke  of  Godwinism;  and,  in  spite  of  his  "poet's  scorn  of 
scorn,"  he  was  unable  throughout  his  life  to  deal  fairly  or 
calmly  with  the  mental  habit  that  in  his  susceptible  years  had 
carried  him  far  out  of  the  orbit  of  his  nature.  "  A  bigot  to  a  new 
idolatry,"  he  had  for  a  brief  time  "laboured  to  cut  off"  his 
heart  from  the  sympathy  and  perception  that  were  the  sources 
of  his  natural  strength  and  to 

"unsoul 

by  syllogistic  words 

Those  mysteries  of  being  which  have  made, 

And  shall  continue  evermore  to  make, 

Of  the  whole  human  race  one  brotherhood."  2 

The  agony  endured  through  the  "corruption"  of  his  feeling 
by  this  unnatural  effort,  the  weariness  and  despair  which  re- 
sulted from  his  attempt  to  live  in  the  alien  element  of  abstract 
1  Professor  George  Rebec.  2  The  Prelude,  xii,  83-7. 


SOCIAL  PHILOSOPHY  OF  WORDSWORTH    165 

thought,  not  only  prevented  him  from  the  normal  development 
of  a  genuinely  courageous  and  philosophic  point  of  view,  but 
biased  his  judgment  of  the  intellectual  activities  themselves. 
In  an  age  when  science  was  calling  forth  men's  best  efforts, 
Wordsworth  could  see  in  analysis  and  classification  nothing 
but  the  operations  of  a  "meddling  intellect";  and  refusing  to 
think  or  to  recognize  the  place  of  the  understanding  in  the  in- 
tellectual economy,  he  paid  the  penalty  that  follows  disloyalty 
to  any  aspect  of  life  or  nature.  In  the  first  crisis  of  his  life,  the 
wreck  of  his  early  religion  of  humanity,  he  proved  the  strength 
and  courage  and  sanity  of  his  spirit  beyond  any  man  of  his 
generation.  In  the  second  he  failed.  This  second  crisis,  the 
crisis  of  middle  age  that  John  Morley  declares  the  final  test  of 
a  man's  nature,  came  early  to  Wordsworth  and  found  him  ill- 
prepared  to  meet  it;  for  even  in  the  hour  of  his  first  victory  he 
had  renounced  the  "grim  reason,"  the  enthusiasm  for  the  whole 
truth,  that  guide  the  greatest  men  to  their  final,  unembittered, 
unillusioned  knowledge  of  reality.  As  the  hopes  of  Words- 
worth's great  years  narrowed,  he  found  no  larger  vision  to 
take  their  place,  he  attained  to  no  deeper  comprehension  of 
the  forces  at  work  for  the  upbuilding  of  mankind.  Thus  his 
message  not  only  remained  incomplete;  it  was  obscured  by  the 
timid  conventionalism  and  narrow  prejudices  of  his  long  old 
age.  Yet  even  the  poetry  of  his  many  dull  years  echoes  with 
the  solemn  joy  of  his  discovery  that  the  kingdom  of  God  was 
to  be  found  in  the  abodes  of  the  humble,  and  that  in  the  light 
of  this  fact  a  radiant  natural  hope  had  dawned  upon  mankind. 


SHELLEY'S    DEMOCRACY 


SHELLEY'S   DEMOCRACY « 

In  the  years  following  the  French  Revolution  radical  de- 
mocracy accepted  from  the  great  thinkers  of  the  eighteenth 
century  an  unquestioning  belief  in  the  fundamental  goodness 
of  human  nature,  the  earthly  brotherhood  of  men,  and  the  re- 
sponsibility of  government  for  the  welfare  of  the  people.  Its 
special  task  was  to  transform  these  large  ideas,  which  an  ear- 
lier generation  had  imagined  so  easy  of  realization,  into  such 
motives  and  habits  of  daily  life  as  would  make  possible  a  genu- 
ine democracy.  But  the  transmutation  of  democratic  theory 
into  democratic  consciousness,  a  slow  and  difficult  process  in 
the  most  favorable  circumstances,  was  made  well-nigh  im- 
possible by  the  social  and  intellectual  condition  of  England  in 
the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  century.  These  years  were  for 
England  years  of  an  economic  revolution  hardly  less  profound, 
though  far  less  evident,  than  the  political  revolution  of  France. 
The  introduction  of  machinery  was  recreating  —  and  threat- 
ening—  its  social  and  industrial  life;  the  spread  of  scientific 
knowledge  and  methods  was  beginning  to  influence  the  general 
habit  of  thought;  new  problems  and  a  new  viewpoint  were 
everywhere  demanding  the  reconstruction  of  existing  institu- 
tions and  accepted  ideas. 

On  this  England,  for  the  most  part  already  radically 
changed,  but  unconscious  of  the  crisis  through  which  it  was 
passing,  the  violence  and  excess  of  the  French  Revolution  fell 
like  a  blight.  The  course  of  progress  seemed  for  the  time  to  be 
turned  back,  and  the  liberty  of  which  Englishmen  had  boasted 
to  be  vanquished  by  the  double  weight  of  legal  oppression  and 
popular  prejudice.  Perplexed  by  the  course  of  events  in  France 

1  For  all  references  to  Shelley's  writings,  unless  otherwise  specified,  see :  The 
Poetical  and  Prose  Works  of  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley,  ed.  H.  B.  Forman,  London, 
1880. 


170    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  terrified  lest  worse  befall  at  home,  Englishmen  tempora- 
rily united  in  uncompromising  championship  of  familiar  institu- 
tions, and  fiercest  denunciations  of  any  plan  that  might  even 
remotely  look  toward  change.  Against  such  an  opposition, 
radical,  or  even  liberal,  thinkers  were  for  the  moment  power- 
less. But  though  their  cause  was  apparently  lost,  they  were  in 
reality  co-workers  with  the  forces  shaping  the  future :  they  ap- 
pealed to  those  larger  motives,  which,  panic  and  intellectual 
inertia  once  cast  off,  must  awaken  a  response  in  the  disinter- 
ested and  generous.  Moreover,  the  necessity  of  that  reorgani- 
zation for  which  they  pleaded  was  brought  home  to  men's 
business  and  bosoms  by  industrial  and  moral  evils  everywhere 
challenging  the  established  order  of  society. 

This  double  movement,  the  reaction  against  Revolutionary 
ideas  and  the  protest  against  that  reaction,  was  everywhere  re- 
flected in  the  poetry  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Scott  turned 
resolutely  from  speculation  of  every  sort  to  mediaeval  tradition. 
Coleridge  dreamed  and  preached  of  a  new  society;  but  he  laid  its 
foundations  in  the  religious  and  political  institutions  inherited 
from  the  past.  Wordsworth  saved  the  ideal  of  the  Revolution 
for  humanity;  but  he  saved  it  by  reducing  human  nature  and 
human  opportunity  to  material  and  intellectual  mediocrity. 
Byron  vindicated  the  right  of  the  individual  to  freedom;  but 
his  conception  of  freedom  was  hardly  more  social  than  that  of 
the  most  philistine  of  his  opponents.  A  similar  failure  in  range 
and  depth  of  social  thought  appeared  hardly  less  markedly  in 
the  poets  of  the  next  generation.  Tennyson,  with  all  his  enthu- 
siasm for  science  and  his  sense  of  human  solidarity,  deprecated 
the  democratic  tendencies  of  his  age  and  found  the  means  of 
escape  from  its  immediate  problems  in  a  mystic  apprehension 
of  the  unseen.  Browning,  though  crowning  his  philosophy  with 
the  halo  of  orthodoxy,  limited  his  song  as  frankly  as  did  Byron 
to  the  experiences  and  claims  of  the  individual  soul.  The  work 
of  these  poets  was  deep-rooted  in  the  actual  life  of  the  time, 
nobly  representative  of  an  England  which,  though  insular  in 
its  prejudices  and  content  with  past  or  passing  ideas,  was  ener- 


SHELLEY'S   DEMOCRACY  171 

getic,  rich  in  experience,  and  eager  for  the  restoration  of  spirit- 
ual ideals.  Compared  with  these  spokesmen  of  two  generations, 
the  poets  who  championed  the  unpopular  cause  of  democracy 
were  few  in  number  and  aliens  in  their  own  age.  Yet  their  work, 
while  sometimes  unsubstantial  because  of  its  isolation  from  the 
main  thought-currents  of  the  time,  has  a  quality  that  is  all  its 
own,  —  what  John  Morley  calls  "the  presentiment  of  the  eve," 
prescient  faith  in  forces  that  were  barely  beginning  to  be. 
For  the  belief  in  humanity  which  is  the  watchword  of  democ- 
racy was  in  those  days  of  reaction  held  by  faith  rather  than  by 
sight;  and  those  who  made  it  their  creed,  whatever  their  other 
gifts,  were  true  seers  in  that  they  looked  toward  the  things  not 
seen;  that  their  words  were  words  of  promise  rather  than  of 
fulfillment. 

Because  of  its  championship  of  ideas  at  first  universally  dis- 
credited and  only  gradually  coming  to  their  own,  the  poetry  of 
democracy,  though  relatively  small  in  bulk  and  too  little  remi- 
niscent of  earth,  played  an  important  part  in  the  life  of  the  last 
century.  The  right  of  men  to  freedom  was  upheld  by  Landor 
in  the  darkest  years  of  reaction.  Faith  in  the  capacities  and 
destinies  of  the  race  inspired  Swinburne's  noblest  songs  and  was 
the  foundation  for  Emerson's  serene  joy  in  life.  Whitman  dis- 
covered the  perfect  ideal  democracy  in  the  everyday  world, 
where  equality  was  firm  planted  on  earth,  where  brotherhood 
lived  in  common  service,  and  where  the  lowliest  life  shared 
with  the  highest  the  nobility  of  humanity.  Shelley  was  second 
to  none  of  these  poets,  either  in  the  fervor  of  his  belief  in  man- 
kind or  in  the  persistency  of  his  efforts  to  make  that  belief  pre- 
vail in  the  world.  He  occupied,  moreover,  a  peculiar  place  in 
their  succession.  With  Godwin  and  Landor  he  accepted  in  its 
fullness  the  democratic  tradition  of  the  eighteenth  century,  but, 
as  a  true  child  of  post-Revolutionary  England,  he  was  forced 
by  the  odds  against  which  he  struggled  to  a  depth  of  under- 
standing possible  neither  to  the  thinkers  from  whom  he  inher- 
ited his  beliefs  nor  to  the  poets  who,  like  Wordsworth,  had 
endured  the  first  shock  of  the  Revolution.  He  was  thus  a  link 


172    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

between  two  generations,  reasserting  the  truth  of  principles 
that  had  moved  the  eighteenth  century  in  a  world  that  had 
been  cut  off  from  its  past,  and  apprehending  those  principles 
in  the  more  universal,  vital,  and  spiritual  sense  which  gave 
them  validity  for  the  future. 

The  ideas  that  make  Shelley  in  some  respects  seem  almost 
our  contemporary,  not  only  set  him  utterly  at  variance  with 
his  own  age,  but  long  delayed  recognition  of  the  intellectual 
value  of  his  poetry.  To  the  overwhelmingly  legal  and  practical 
minds  of  pre- Victorian  England,  his  uncompromising  appeal 
to  principles,  his  insistence  on  spiritual  freedom  as  the  condi- 
tion of  goodness,  the  radiant  idealism  of  his  social  and  ethical 
system,  were  meaningless  or  sacrilegious;  and  even  when, 
toward  the  middle  of  the  century,  concern  for  ideas  became 
more  disinterested  as  well  as  more  general,  the  theories  upheld 
by  him  were  as  remote  from  current  thought  as  the  visions  of 
the  most  Utopian  dreamer.  Of  late  years,  though  his  position 
in  the  advance-guard  of  his  generation  has  been  established  be- 
yond cavil  and  the  fundamental  importance  of  the  questions 
with  which  he  dealt  is  beginning  to  be  generally  admitted, 
critics  continue  to  condemn  his  position,  or  to  relegate  his 
theories  to  the  limbo  of  departed  vanities.  Leslie  Stephen  de- 
clares that  Shelley's  earlier  poetry,  especially  Queen  Mab  and 
The  Revolt  of  Islam,  echoes  "much  inexpressibly  dreary  rant 
which  has  deafened  us  from  a  thousand  platforms,"  and  char- 
acterizes his  land  of  promise  as  "an  unsubstantial  phantasma- 
goria in  the  clouds."  l  A  classicist  like  Mr.  Courthope  renders 
in  more  prosaic  terms  Matthew  Arnold's  earlier  description  of 
the  poet  as  a  "beautiful  and  ineffectual  angel,  beating  in  the 
void  his  luminous  wings  in  vain,"2  when  he  styles  him  "the 
Don  Quixote  of  poetry,"  and  urges  that  his  radicalism,  his  at- 
tempt to  establish  a  purely  ideal  society,  leaves  no  basis  of 
fact  for  his  art.3   Kingsley's  statement  that  Shelley's  life  was 

1  Cornhill  Magazine,  March,  1879. 

2  "Byron,"  Essays  in  Criticism,  Second  Series,  ed.  1888,  p.  203. 

a  "Scott,  Byron,  Shelley,"  Liberal  Movement  in  English  Literature,  ed.  1885, 
pp.  144,  156v 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  173 

"a  denial  of  external  law,  and  a  substitution  in  its  place  of  in- 
ternal sentiment,"  x  is  repeated  by  ultra-conservatives  of  all 
types,  who  see  in  Shelley  the  anarchist  in  creed  and  art  as  well 
as  in  conduct. 

These  charges  of  ineffectiveness,  of  slightness  and  unsub- 
stantially of  thought,  of  defiance  of  moral  law,  still  current 
among  authoritative  critics,  were  all  but  universal  during  the 
early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century.  Even  among  the  radical 
thinkers  with  whom  Shelley  was  identified  in  principles  and  aim, 
appreciation  of  his  social  philosophy  came  slowly,  the  poetic 
idealism  of  his  teachings  being  hardly  less  remote  from  their 
sympathy  than  from  the  understanding  of  their  conservative 
contemporaries.  It  was,  indeed,  only  in  the  last  third  of  the 
nineteenth  century  that  his  place  as  one  of  the  reconstructive 
thinkers  of  its  early  years  began  to  be  generally  recognized 
in  critical  circles.  An  anonymous  writer  in  the  North  British 
Review  in  1870 2  argued  that  Shelley  was  among  the  first  to 
perceive  the  forces  at  work  in  the  new  democracy.  In  1886 
there  appeared  in  the  Edinburgh  Review  an  article  pointing 
out  the  practicability  of  his  political  ideas,  and  calling  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  many  of  the  reforms  proposed  by  him 
either  had  been  accomplished  or  were  then  accepted  as  open 
to  discussion.3  In  1887  a  lecture  delivered  to  the  Shelley 
Society  tried  to  prove  the  thesis,  doubtless  suggested  by 
Marx,  that  Shelley  was  a  Socialist.4  Since  that  time  critics 
have  increasingly  testified  to  his  character  of  social  and 
moral  seer.  Mr.  Revell,  in  an  article  on  Shelley's  Prome- 
theus Unbound  in  1907,  says  that  Shelley  fulfills  one  of  the 

1  "Thoughts  on  Shelley  and  Byron,"  Literary  and  General  Essays,  ed.  1888, 
p.  45. 

2  October.  8  July. 

4  Shelley  Soc.  Pub.,  vol.  I,  part  2,  p.  183.  The  following  sentence  from  Marx 
was  quoted  in  this  lecture:  "The  real  difference  between  Shelley  and  Byron  is 
this:  those  who  understand  them  and  love  them  rejoice  that  Byron  died  at 
thirty-six,  because  if  he  had  lived  he  would  have  become  a  reactionary  bour- 
geois; they  grieve  that  Shelley  died  at  twenty-nine,  because  he  was  essentially 
a  revolutionist,  and  he  would  always  have  been  one  of  the  advanced  guard  of 
Socialism," 


174    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

great  functions  of  the  poet  by  holding  "the  mirror  up  to 
nature  as  she  is  tending  to  become."  1  Professor  Woodberry 
declares  that  Shelley's  political,  social  and  religious  beliefs,  far 
from  being  unusual,  were  but  "the  simple  truths  whose  accept- 
ance by  the  world  goes  on  so  slowly,"  that  his  genius  had  the 
"prescience  by  which  it  seized  the  elements  of  the  future  yet 
inchoate,  and  glorified  them,  and  won  the  hearts  of  men  .  .  . 
fervently  to  desire  their  coming."  2  The  recognition  of  Shelley's 
place  in  modern  thought  indicated  by  these  few  quotations 
may  be  lightly  dismissed  by  the  unsympathetic  as  Utopian 
echoes  of  an  earlier  Utopian;  but  there  is  no  disputing  that 
such  judgments  as  these,  whether  right  or  wrong,  represent 
the  convictions  of  some  of  the  most  scholarly  as  well  as  the 
most  vital  among  present-day  thinkers. 

But  if  Shelley's  teachings  were  recognized  but  slowly  by 
professional  critics,  they  were  from  the  very  first  a  powerful 
influence  among  the  radical  workingmen  of  England.  Stop- 
ford  Brooke,  in  his  inaugural  address  to  the  Shelley  Society  in 
1886,  declared  that  Shelley  was  then  recognized  as  their  inter- 
preter by  the  thoughtful  members  of  the  laboring  class;  that 
as  the  poor  and  the  oppressed  themselves  came  to  understand 
the  ideas  that  moved  them,  they  found  in  him  at  once  their 
poet  and  priest.3  But  the  influence  of  Shelley  over  the  radical 
poor,  so  lately  remarked  by  Stopford  Brooke,  had  in  reality 
begun  in  the  early  decades  of  the  century.  The  interest  of 
readers  of  this  class  would  seem  to  have  centered  in  Queen  Mab, 
a  poem  written  before  Shelley  was  twenty-one  and  embodying 
the  ideas  in  which  he  then  passionately  trusted  for  the  reform 
of  the  world.  Though  the  doctrines  laid  down  in  it  were  never 
abandoned  by  him,  they  were  later  developed  in  far  nobler 
form;  and  the  poet,  absorbed  in  the  composition  of  Prome- 
theus Unbound  or  The  Cenci  or  Charles  the  First,  would  seem 
almost  to  have  forgotten  the  work  of  his  youth 4  when  it  was 

1  Westminster  Review,  October. 

2  Makers  of  Literature,  ed.  1900,  pp.  415,  435-6. 
8  Shelley  Soc.  Pub.,  vol.  I,  part  1,  p.  18. 

4  Letter  to  Horatio  Smith,  Sept.  14, 1821. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  175 

brought  into  a  wholly  accidental  prominence.  As  it  could  not 
pass  the  censor,  Queen  Mab  had  never  been  published,  though 
it  had  been  printed  privately  and  a  number  of  copies  had  been 
distributed.  In  Shelley's  trial  for  the  guardianship  of  his  chil- 
dren, it  was,  however,  offered  as  evidence  of  his  moral  and  re- 
ligious unfitness  for  the  office,  and,  possibly  in  consequence  of 
this  notoriety,  was  after  1821  so  constantly  the  prey  of  pirati- 
cal publishers  that  the  poet  was  finally  in  self-defense  driven 
to  reprint  it.  Though  these  circumstances  doubtless  greatly 
increased  the  influence  of  the  book,  it  appealed  to  its  radical 
constituency  primarily  by  virtue  of  its  radical  propaganda 
and  its  direct  rather  than  imaginative  presentation  of  ideas. 
It  is  significant  that  the  notes,  setting  forth  Shelley's  theories 
on  everything,  from  vegetarianism  to  religion,  seem  to  have 
been  hardly  less  influential  than  the  poem  itself.  Mr.  Buxton 
Forman  says  that  a  "vest-pocket"  edition  published  in  1826, 
was  "regarded  at  the  time  as  an  edition  for  the  'mechanic  and 
labourer ' " ;  that  a  cheap  edition  in  1833  was  "  largely  consumed 
by  the  Owenites,"  —  to  whom,  he  adds,  "Queen  Mab  is  said  to 
have  stood  in  the  position  of  a  gospel " ;  and  that,  when  he  him- 
self went  to  London  as  a  boy  in  1860,  he  found  still  current  an 
edition,  based  on  one  issued  still  earlier  by  a  firm  of  "notable 
free-thought  and  free-press  publishers,"  which  had  played  an 
important  part  in  the  "  unsettlement "  of  English  ideas  in  the 
mid-years  of  the  century.1  The  long-continued  influence  of 
Shelley  over  the  radical  workmen  of  England  indicated  by  the 
history  of  Queen  Mab  forms  a  striking  commentary  on  Matthew 
Arnold's  judgment:  "The  Shelley  of  actual  life  is  a  vision  of 
beauty  and  radiance,  indeed,  but  availing  nothing,  effecting 
nothing."  2  The  fact  that  the  men  who  were  among  the  first 
to  lay  Shelley's  gospel  to  heart  were  primarily  concerned  with 
the  sternest  realities  bears  testimony  not  only  to  a  genuine 
humanity  but  to  some  measure  of  practicability  in  ideas 
judged  to  be  chimerical  by  more  conventional  thinkers. 

1  Shelley  Soc.  Pub.,  vol.  I,  part  1,  pp.  30-3. 

2  "Shelley,"  Essays  in  Criticism,  Secgnd  Series,  ed.  1888,  p.  251-%. 


176    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Shelley's  social  creed,  however  influenced  by  the  peculiar 
qualities  of  his  own  mind  or  the  social  conditions  of  England 
during  his  youth,  was  drawn  chiefly  from  the  French  philoso- 
phers of  the  eighteenth  century.  But  though  there  is  sufficient 
testimony  to  his  direct  knowledge  of  the  writings  of  these  phi- 
losophers, he  was  moved  by  them  chiefly  as  they  were  inter- 
preted by  William  Godwin,  perhaps  the  greatest  and  certainly 
in  post-Revolutionary  years  the  most  influential  spokesman  of 
radical  ideas  in  England.  Godwin  stood  by  no  means  alone  in 
his  defense  of  the  principles  on  which  the  Revolutionists  had 
acted.  A  sermon  preached  before  a  revolutionary  society  in 
London  was  the  occasion  of  Burke's  Reflections,  which  may  be 
taken  to  mark  the  beginning  of  the  counter-revolution  in  Eng- 
land. This  book,  itself  the  classic  expression  of  the  conserva- 
tive temper,  called  out  many  answers;  and  one  of  them, 
Paine's  Rights  of  Man,  though  lacking  the  profound  insight 
into  men  and  affairs  that  constitutes  the  greatness  of  the  Re- 
flections, made  a  plea  for  France  that  rested  on  a  far  stronger 
foundation  of  fact  and  logic.  Thelwall  and  the  group  of  demo- 
crats with  whom  he  was  associated  represented  a  small  but 
determined  minority,  which  held  tenaciously  to  radical  beliefs 
during  the  early  years  of  reactionary  conservatism.  Bentham 
and  James  Mill,  whose  work  left  so  strong  a  mark  on  the  next 
two  generations,  never  paused  in  their  investigations  of  the 
legal  and  political  institutions  of  their  time,  or  in  their  demand 
for  a  more  reasonable  and  equitable  social  system. 

Among  these  men,  who  carried  on  in  such  different  ways  the 
tradition  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Godwin  was  peculiarly  the 
interpreter  of  its  philosophy.  The  effect  on  him  of  the  catas- 
trophe that  was  overwhelming  Europe  was  to  fire  him  with  new 
zeal  for  the  beliefs  to  which  his  early  allegiance  had  been  given; 
and,  when  driven  to  defend  his  principles  by  the  violence  of  the 
attacks  on  them,  he  forthwith  set  out  to  vindicate  them  both 
against  the  conservatives  who  had  renounced  them,  and  the 
radicals  who  were  equally  betraying  them  by  their  defense 
of  the  actual  course  of  the  Revolution.    Political  Justice,  pub- 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  177 

lished  in  the  year  of  the  Terror  and  allowed  to  pass  the  censors 
only  because  it  was  supposed  that  a  three-guinea  book  could 
do  little  harm,  recapitulates  much  of  the  thought  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  as  to  human  nature,  education,  and  progress. 
But  it  is  the  passion  of  faith  running  through  its  geometrically 
demonstrated  arguments,  a  passion  generated  in  the  overthrow 
of  old  conditions  and  the  darkness  shadowing  the  birth  of  a 
new  humanity,  that  gives  the  book  its  peculiar  quality,  an  in- 
tellectual fervor  which  stirs  the  soul  through  its  appeal  to  rea- 
son hardly  less  than  do  the  "beautiful  idealisms"  of  the  im- 
agination. This  energy  of  faith  which  touches  its  abstractions 
into  life,  made  its  author  the  most  effective  medium  of  com- 
munication between  the  old  order  and  the  new.  During  the 
years  following  the  outbreak  of  the  Revolution  he  was  a  center 
of  radical  influence  in  London  from  which  not  even  those  escaped 
who,  like  Lamb,  were  indifferent  to  theory,  or,  like  Coleridge, 
were  too  mystic  and  absolute  in  philosophy  finally  to  join  the 
ranks  of  utilitarians  and  experientialists. 

It  was,  of  course,  inevitable  that  the  quintessential  ration- 
alism of  Godwin's  position,  which  made  him  the  rallying-point 
for  the  enthusiasts  and  idealists  of  the  day,  should  have  a  re- 
pellent and  negative  influence  on  practical,  conservative,  and 
concrete  thinkers.  Wordsworth,  for  instance,  learned  of  the 
philosopher  into  whose  orbit  a  youthful  ardor  for  the  principles 
of  the  Revolution  had  brought  him,  nothing  better  than  a 
misunderstanding  of  his  position  absurd  to  the  point  of  carica- 
ture and  an  enduring  scorn  for  the  whole  process  of  intellectual 
analysis.  But  in  Shelley,  enthusiastic  for  freedom,  idealistic 
in  temperament,  and  familiar  with  Godwin  in  the  first  flush  of 
his  youth,  we  see  the  full  force  of  the  older  thinker's  power  to 
stimulate  and  inspire.  Shelley  later  wrote  that  Godwin  had 
been  to  the  age  in  moral  philosophy  what  Wordsworth  had 
been  in  poetry; *  and  his  own  appropriation,  repetition,  and 
development  of  Godwin's  ideas  are  an  even  more  significant 
acknowledgment  of  his  debt  than  the  admiration  which  out- 
1  "Remarks  on  Mandeville  and  Mr.  Godwin,"  Prose  Works,  vol.  in,  p.  4. 


178    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

lived  the  disillusion  of  intimate  personal  intercourse  with  the 
hero  of  his  early  years. 

But  though  Shelley  drew  his  philosophy  in  the  main  from 
the  eighteenth  century,  the  particular  form  which  he  gave  it 
was  determined  by  the  condition  of  England  during  his  boy- 
hood and  youth.  Life  moved  fast  in  those  years  of  catastrophe 
and  counter-catastrophe,  and  Shelley,  born  at  the  very  height 
of  the  Revolution,  grew  up  in  a  world  that  at  every  point 
challenged  his  belief  in  freedom  and  progress,  a  world  in  which 
the  average  Englishman,  conservative  to  the  point  of  bigotry, 
was  buried  in  a  self -content  that  allowed  for  no  play  of  thought, 
and  dreamed  of  no  need  for  social  change.  His  relations  with 
his  father,  apparently  a  thoroughly  conventional  man,  well 
stocked  with  worldly  wisdom,  and  his  experiences  at  school, 
where  he  suffered  deeply  from  the  unrestrained  tyranny  of  the 
selfish  and  strong  among  his  fellows,  early  sharpened  his  sense 
of  the  heartless  brutality  of  a  society  with  which  his  fine- 
wrought  nature  was  ill-fitted  to  cope.  His  antagonism  to  the 
materialistic  code  of  the  people  in  the  midst  of  whom  he  grew 
up  was  further  strengthened  by  the  suffering,  inhumanity,  and 
governmental  tyranny  everywhere  evident  to  the  intelligent 
observer.  The  luxury  of  the  few  and  the  degrading  poverty 
prevailing  among  great  masses  of  the  people;  the  tyranny  of 
a  public  opinion  barely  beginning  to  consider  Catholic  eman- 
cipation and  Irish  representation  possible;  the  rigor  with  which 
the  censorship  of  all  publications  was  enforced  and  the  free  ex- 
pression of  unpopular  truths  effectually  hindered;  the  preva- 
lent immorality,  hypocritical  and  cynical,  due  to  the  lack  of 
any  deep  social  enthusiasm  even  more  than  to  the  life  of  the 
court  and  the  flaunting  arrogance  of  wealth,  —  all  these  united 
to  convince  an  ardent  believer  in  progress  of  the  need  of  radical 
changes  in  the  whole  social  fabric. 

Nor  was  there  in  such  a  state  of  affairs  any  chance  for  the 
buoyant  faith  in  the  easy  victory  of  good  that  had  satisfied 
the  pre-Revolutionists.  Between  them  and  the  England  of 
Shelley's  youth  lay  the  gulf  of  a  great  experience  and  a  great 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  179 

failure,  in  the  light  of  which  even  the  most  optimistic  could 
hope  for  no  speedy  conquest  over  evil.  Shelley  was  thus  com- 
pelled to  recognize,  not  only  the  wrongs  existing  in  the  society 
around  him,  but  the  difficulties  that  were  to  be  overcome  in 
eradicating  them.  The  spirit  in  which  those  difficulties  were 
to  be  met,  he  defines  in  the  preface  to  The  Revolt  of  Islam.  Ex- 
perience teaches,  he  says,  that  the  reform  of  society  is  to  be 
brought  about  "by  resolute  perseverance  and  indefatigable 
hope,  and  long-suffering  and  long-believing  courage,  and  the 
systematic  efforts  of  generations  of  men  of  intellect  and 
virtue."  His  Irish  addresses  reiterate  his  belief  that,  however 
great  the  practical  difficulties,  any  genuine  improvement  in  the 
condition  of  mankind  is  to  be  brought  about  only  by  combined 
and  long-continued  effort.  Among  the  noblest  passages  in  his 
poetry  are  those  which  record,  as  does  the  opening  soliloquy  of 
Prometheus,  the  perfected  work  of  perseverance  in  well-doing; 
or  which,  like  Cythna's  speech  to  the  conquered  Laon,  sing  the 
hope  which  has  passed  through  the  defeat  of  its  dearest  pur- 
poses into  the  larger  hope  of  human  achievement.  It  was,  in- 
deed, his  perception  of  the  largeness  as  well  as  of  the  greatness 
of  the  task  of  reform  that  made  Shelley's  reincarnation  of 
revolutionary  doctrines  so  potent  a  force  in  the  later  history  of 
democracy.  He  was  among  the  moulders  of  the  future,  not 
only  because  of  his  faith  in  mankind,  but  because  he  had  laid 
to  heart  the  lesson  of  experience,  had  learned  something  of  the 
marvelous  complexity  of  the  right  social  order  as  of  the  men 
and  women  who  must  create  it,  had  recognized  the  need  of  in- 
finite patience,  wisdom,  and  endeavor  if  social  conditions  are 
to  be  fundamentally  changed. 

Shelley's  philosophic  creed,  fashioned  from  the  theories  of  his 
radical  predecessors  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  a  bankrupt  age, 
was  deeply  marked  with  the  stamp  of  his  personality.  A  Platon- 
ist  of  Platonists,  he  united  in  himself  the  two  strains,  so  often 
divorced  from  each  other,  of  the  Platonic  tradition:  a  mystic 
sense  of  things  unseen  and  a  belief  in  ideas  as  the  realities  that 
inform  and  control  action.    His  schemes  of  reform,  his  moral 


180    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE* 

code,  his  appreciation  of  beauty,  his  personal  experience,  were 
all  colored  by  his  abiding  sense  of  a  supreme  spiritual  force  re- 
vealed in  and  through  the  visible  world,  and  of  the  enduring 
potency  in  human  life  of  truth,  the  embodiment  of  men's 
knowledge  of  this  supreme  reality.  He  was  thus  primarily  con- 
cerned with  the  principles  of  action  rather  than  with  actions 
themselves,  and,  like  Coleridge,  whom  he  in  several  respects 
strikingly  resembled,  tended  to  forget  the  tangible  fact  in  en- 
thusiasm for  the  idea  it  represented  or  illustrated.    This  preoc- 
cupation with  the  moving  principles  of  things  conditioned  the 
whole  body  of  his  poetry;  it  was  as  evident  when  he  sang  of  his 
more  intimately  personal  moods  as  when  he  set  forth  the  social 
philosophy  he  felt  hardly  less  deeply.    Even  the  critics  who  ap- 
preciate the  scope  of  this  philosophy  are  likely  to  discount  the 
value  of  his  personal  poetry  by  putting  it  in  a  class  by  itself, 
and  labeling  it  metaphysical  or  unreal.   The  distinction  they 
make,  resting  ultimately  in  a  somewhat  crude  antithesis  be- 
tween the  personal  and  the  impersonal,  or  the  real  and  the  im- 
aginary, was  utterly  foreign  to  Shelley's  habit  of  thought.  The 
characters  and  the  types  of  experience  portrayed  in  Alastor  and 
Epipsychidion,  however  remote  from  our  everyday  life,  can 
no  more  be  dismissed  as  lacking  in  serious  human  content 
than  those  professedly  dealing  with  social  reform.    The  poet 
imaging  forth  a  new  and  prophetic  reality  created,  it  is  true,  a 
world  remote  from  the  familiar  phases  of  experience,  but  he 
made  his  characters  live  and  move  with  self -consistent  realism 
in  this  world  of  his  creation.   Laon,  Cythna,  and  Prometheus 
are  easily  recognized  as  children  of  the  better  social  order  for 
which  he  hoped;  but  in  their  freedom  from  meanness  and  sus- 
picion, self-interest  and  violence,  as  well  as  in  their  primary 
aim  to  secure  the  well-being  of  their  fellow-men,  they  are  akin 
to  the  most  highly  developed  individuals  in  existing  commu- 
nities.  The  hero  of  Alastor  and  the  lover  in  Epipsychidion  are 
characters  of  the  same  type  in  more  personal  and  intimate 
relations,  and  reveal  themselves,  hardly  less  than  the  protago- 
nists of  freedom,  as  real  persons,  however  exalted  and  truth- 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  181 

loving,  however  impassioned  for  the  ideal  and  responsive  to  a 
supersensuous  loveliness. 

Shelley  himself  recognized  that  the  experiences  which  he 
presented  lay  outside  the  range  of  common  knowledge.  Speak- 
ing of  Epipsychidion,  he  wrote  to  Mr.  Gisborne  that  "real  flesh 
and  blood"  were  not  among  the  articles  he  dealt  in;  that  one 
"might  as  well  go  to  a  gin-shop  for  a  leg  of  mutton,  as  expect 
anything  human  or  earthly"  from  him.1  But  this  passing  dis- 
claimer of  a  flesh-and-blood  reality  was  hardly  true  to  Shelley's 
abiding  conception  of  human  nature,  which  he  believed  to  be 
in  essence  so  militantly  intellectual  and  spiritual  as  to  exclude 
all  that  was  grossly  material.  His  faith  in  the  future  of  the 
race,  as  in  the  moral  power  of  each  individual,  rested  on  the 
conviction  that  men's  capacity  for  spiritual  development  was 
infinite,  while  their  material  demands  must,  through  the 
growth  of  higher  faculties,  be  more  and  more  limited  to  actual 
physical  necessities;  not  only  was  the  simplest  and  plainest  of 
living  the  absolute  condition  of  high  thinking  and  noble  feeling, 
but  true  simplicity  became  possible  only  as  men  entered  into 
possession  of  the  higher  realms  of  consciousness.  The  ethereal 
experiences  of  his  chosen  spirits,  incomprehensible  though  they 
be  to  the  flesh-tethered  sense  of  many  readers,  thus  formed  a 
component  part  of  the  actual  world  in  which  Shelley's  mind 
lived  and  freely  moved. 

Shelley's  interest  in  social  matters  developed  early,  and  be- 
cause of  the  peculiar  intensity  of  his  temperament  was  deeply 
colored  by  the  circumstances  of  his  life.  According  to  Mr. 
Dowden,  the  most  momentous  events  of  his  boyhood  were  the 
two  dedications  of  himself  recorded  in  his  poetry:  the  dedica- 
tion of  his  imagination  to  the  service  of  beauty  and  the  dedica- 
tion of  "his  moral  being  to  justice,  gentleness  and  freedom."  2 
These  vows,  however  superficially  opposed,  were  in  reality 
united  in  Shelley's  profound  sense  of  human  brotherhood.  It 
was  while  "musing  deeply  on  the  lot  of  life,"  3  that  he  was  led 

it 

1  Letter  to  John  Gisborne,  October  22,  1821. 

2  Life  of  Shelley,  ed.  1886,  vol.  i,  pp.  36-7. 

3  Hymn  to  Intellectual  Beauty,  stanza  5. 


182    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

to  devote  himself  to  the  service  of  beauty;  and  the  resolve  that 
he  would  be  henceforth  "wise,  and  just,  and  free,  and  mild," 
was  inspired  by 

"  one  echo  from  a  world  of  woes  — 
The  harsh  and  grating  strife  of  tyrants  and  of  foes,"  l 

which,  falling  on  his  ears  as  he  walked  over  the  grass  outside 
Sion  House  Academy,  "burst  his  spirit's  sleep"  and  called  him 
to  take  arms  against  oppression  in  every  form.  But  we  need  no 
such  testimony  as  this  to  prove  that  zeal  for  freedom  and 
humanity  was,  from  the  first,  warp  and  woof  of  Shelley's  con- 
sciousness. It  appeared  in  his  earliest  extant  poems,  which  are 
full  of  rebellion  against  the  rule  of  force,  of  satire  on  the  vices 
of  the  times,  and  of  a  genuine,  though  conventional,  enthusiasm 
for  liberty;  and  it  manifested  itself  even  in  his  boyhood  in  his 
courageous  protests  against  evil  and  falsehood  wherever  he 
met  them.  In  Eton  he  rebelled  against  the  fagging  system.   In 

1811  at  Oxford  he  attacked  what  he  considered  intolerance  and 
bigotry  by  the  publication  of  the  tract  entitled  The  Necessity 
of  Atheism,  —  and  suffered  expulsion  rather  than  yield  to  the 
injustice  that  denied  him  the  right  to  speak  his  mind.    In 

1812  he  wrote  the  Letter  to  Lord  Ellenborough,  protesting  on 
grounds,  not  of  legal  but  of  moral  justice,  against  the  con- 
demnation of  Daniel  Isaac  Eaton  for  publishing  the  third  part 
of  Paine's  Age  of  Reason.  In  the  autumn  of  the  same  year  he 
set  out  on  his  campaign  of  propaganda  in  Ireland,  and  in  1813 
published  Queen  Mab,  the  first  of  his  important  if  not  of  his 
great  poems.  The  prosaic  and  didactic  character  of  Queen  Mab 
has  been  often  pointed  out.  Leslie  Stephen,  for  instance,  says 
that  many  of  its  pages  read  like  passages  of  Political  Justice 
done  into  verse,2  and  Buxton  Forman  describes  it  as  Shelley's 
"first  serious  essay  at  large  in  the  quixotic  task  of  reforming 
the  world  by  preachment." 3  But  though  its  poetry  was  un- 
poetic,  Queen  Mab  has  the  double  interest  of  giving  a  singularly 

1  Dedication  to  Laon  and  Cythna,  stanza  3. 

2  Cornhill  Magazine,  March,  1879. 

3  Shelley  Soc.  Pub.,  vol.  i,  part  1,  p.  22. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  183 

complete  epitome  of  Shelley's  ideas  and  of  being  his  first  im- 
portant attempt  to  embody  them  in  imaginative  form. 

These  ideas  are  nowhere  more  clearly  stated  than  in  the 
magnificent  lyric  in  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  published  five  years 
later  than  Queen  Mab,  in  which  Cythna  chants  the  triumph  of 
the  people's  cause.  Shelley's  imagination  had  by  this  time 
taken  full  possession  of  his  philosophy;  and  his  ideas,  wherever 
he  got  them  and  however  they  had  been  developed,  were  pre- 
sented with  consequent  entirety  and  force.  Cythna,  address- 
ing the  nations  victorious  over  evil,  was  herself  the  embodi- 
ment of  the  good  for  which  they  hoped,  as  she 

"Stood,  'mid  the  throngs  which  ever  ebbed  and  flowed 
Like  light  amid  the  shadows  of  the  sea 
Cast  from  one  cloudless  star."  l 

Her  song  is  a  threefold  triumph.  First,  it  sings  the  enfranchise- 
ment of  mankind  from 

"Faith,  and  Folly, 
Custom,  and  Hell,  and  mortal  Melancholy," 

and  calls  upon  the  "irresistible  children"  of  Wisdom  to  live  a 
life  where 

"Scorn,  and  Hate, 
Revenge  and  Selfishness  are  desolate," 

where 

"A  hundred  nations  swear  that  there  shall  be 
Pity  and  Peace  and  Love,  among  the  good  and  free!"  2 

Then  it  celebrates  the  reign  of  that  "eldest  of  things,  divine 
Equality,"  in  whose  long-desired  coming  the  heart  of  nature 
and  of  man  rejoices,  and  under  whose  rule  love  becomes  the 
single  law  of  life.  And,  finally,  it  declares  the  new  power  that 
has  at  last  come  to  rule  the  earth :  — 

"Thoughts  have  gone  forth  whose  powers  can  sleep  no  more! 

Almighty  Fear, 

The  Fiend-God,  when  our  charmed  name  he  hear, 

Shall  fade  like  shadow  from  his  thousand  fanes, 

While  Truth  with  Joy  enthroned  o'er  his  lost  empire  reigns!"  ■ 

1  Laon  and  Cythna,  canto  v,  stanza  51. 
8  Ibid.,  1  and  2.  »  Ibid.,  6. 


184    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Nor  does  Cythna  pause  with  this  lyric  apotheosis  of  the 
great  principles  controlling  social  and  individual  life,  —  free- 
dom, equality,  and  the  power  of  mind  to  make  the  world  a  fit 
place  to  live  in :  she  insists  on  applying  these  principles  to  defi- 
nite conditions  and  problems.  Equality  is  the  basal  social 
fact,  freedom  the  one  condition  of  human  happiness.  The  po- 
litical corollary  is  inevitable:  the  only  government  that  has  a 
right  to  exist  is  that  which  Shelley  elsewhere  describes  as  the 
"perfect  and  genuine  republic,"  comprehending  every  living 
being.1  The  principles  of  justice  are  applied  to  men's  social  and 
moral  relations  as  inexorably  as  to  questions  of  politics.  In  a 
truly  moral  society  goodness  becomes  possible  only  through 
voluntary  allegiance  to  ends  set  itself  by  a  free  personality.  In 
proportion,  therefore,  as  men  become  good,  institutions  — 
whether  of  marriage-tie  or  binding  promise,  priestly  office  or 
church-organization  —  are  recognized  as  the  shackles  of  slav- 
ery: faith  is  to  be  liberated  from  prescription,  domestic  life 
enfranchised  from  the  power  of  the  man  no  less  than  from 
the  dependence  of  the  woman;  children  are  to  be  freed  from 
the  tyranny  of  arbitrary  control;  love  is  to  be  "lawless"  in  the 
sense  that  it  follows  the  law  of  its  own  nature.  The  new  declar- 
ation of  equality  extends  even  to  the  animal  world.  Never 
again,  says  Cythna  in  the  hour  when  right  seems  to  have  tri- 
umphed, — 

"may  blood  of  bird  or  beast 
Stain  with  its  venomous  stream  a  human  feast. 


The  dwellers  of  the  earth  and  air 

Shall  throng  around  our  steps  in  gladness 

Seeking  their  food  or  refuge  there."  2 


Nor  does  this  inclusive  democracy  benefit  beast  and  bird 
alone;  according  to  Shelley,  men  gain  from  the  abolition  of 
flesh-eating  and  its  attendant  brutalities  greater  freedom  from 
disease  and  a  widened  sympathy  with  all  living  things. 

In  this  picture  of  a  world  ruled  by  justice,  Cythna,  though 

1  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  362. 

2  Laon  and  Cythna,  canto  v,  stanza  51,  5. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  185 

she  briefly  suggested  the  power  of  thought  to  beautify  life 
through  art  and  science,  and  to  free  men's  minds  from  fear  and 
superstition,  emphasized  the  practical  results  of  the  new  reign 
of  freedom  rather  than  the  methods  by  which  the  cause  of 
right  might  triumph.  Later,  when  her  faith  in  "  the  dawn  of 
mind"  which  was  to  illumine  the  world  had  been  betrayed,  and 
humanity  was  again  delivered  to  slavery  and  shame,  she  de- 
veloped far  more  fully,  in  speaking  of  her  hope  for  the  future, 
the  grounds  on  which  it  rested  and  the  means  by  which  it 
might  be  brought  about.  "The  passion  for  reforming  the 
world,"  says  Mr.  Buxton  Forman,  "was  with  Shelley  not  only 
a  passion  for  attaining  somehow  to  the  supremacy  of  good  and 
the  abolition  of  evil,  but  also  for  reforming  fundamentally 
the  means  of  reform."  *  For  resisting  evil  and  emancipating 
mankind  from  its  material  and  spiritual  slavery,  Shelley  trusted 
wholly  to  the  spread  of  knowledge,  the  growth  of  sympathy, 
and  the  convincing  power  of  truth.  His  was  no  half-hearted 
acceptance  of  a  doctrine  of  peace  which  might  need  to  be  en- 
forced by  the  sword,  of  an  appeal  to  reason  till  such  time  as  his 
cause  merited  the  support  of  authority;  as  firm  as  Tolstoi  in 
his  refusal  to  meet  violence  with  violence,  he  could  trust,  even 
in  the  hour  of  defeat,  to  the  ultimate  triumph  of  good.  To  this 
mood  of  resolute  confidence  in  the  power  of  mind  to  vanquish 
evil,  Cythna  gave  perfect  expression  when  forced  to  recognize 
the  failure  of  her  dearest  hopes.  Doomed  to  die  by  a  world 
that  had  belied  its  promise,  and  finding  the  earnest  of  her  early 
faith  only  in  the  hearts  of  herself  and  her  lover,  she  still  relied 
on  moral  and  intellectual  means  for  the  diffusion  of  truth:  — 

"Our  many  thoughts  and  deeds     .... 


Immortally  must  live,  and  burn,  and  move, 
When  we  shall  be  no  more."  2 

This  belief  in  the  power  of  thought  is,  moreover,  rational 
rather  than  sentimental;  it  rests  ultimately  on   necessity, 

1  Shelley  Soc.  Pub.,  vol.  I,  part  1,  p.  20. 

2  Laon  and  Cythna,  canto  ix,  stanza  30. 


186    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

which  links  cause  and  effect  together,  and,  compelling  like  to 
bring  forth  like  to  all  time,  assures  the  final  triumph  of  good. 
There  is  a  Godwinian  elation  in  her  words :  — 

"One  comes  behind, 
Who  aye  the  future  to  the  past  will  bind  — 
Necessity,  whose  sightless  strength  forever 
Evil  with  evil,  good  with  good  must  wind 
In  bonds  of  union,  which  no  power  may  sever: 
They  must  bring  forth  their  kind,  and  be  divided  never!"  *• 

Nothing  is  more  characteristic  of  Shelley  than  the  definite 
practical  conclusions  drawn  from  his  general  principles.  The 
charge  of  vagueness,  so  often  urged  against  his  ideas,  can 
seldom  be  sustained  by  reference  to  his  social  doctrines,  which 
are  continually  pushed  to  the  point  of  application.  Theory 
and  practice  were,  in  fact,  always  identical  to  him:  what  he 
preached  he  lived,  and  what  he  did  he  believed  to  be  philo- 
sophically justifiable.  His  character  was  singularly  of  a  piece. 
His  spiritual  philosophy  was  illustrated  by  personal  habits 
refined  to  asceticism;  his  esteem  for  knowledge  was  paral- 
leled by  his  impassioned  pursuit  of  it;  the  kindness  and  jus- 
tice that  he  preached,  he  practiced,  both  in  a  devotion  to  his 
friends  that  paused  at  no  sacrifice  of  thought  or  strength  or 
money,  and  in  a  care  for  the  poor  that  made  him  respond 
instantly  and  adequately  to  the  call  of  need;  the  principles 
in  which  he  believed  were  supported  by  constant  study 
of  the  conditions  to  which  those  principles  had  to  be  ap- 
plied. As  long  as  he  made  England  his  home  he  worked  ac- 
tively for  the  cause  of  freedom.  The  most  familiar  instance 
of  this  is  his  campaign  in  Ireland,  whither  he  went  in  1812, 
when  he  was  scarcely  twenty  years  old,  to  teach  the  doctrines 
of  justice  and  self-control  that  he  believed  essential  if  Irish- 
men were  to  win  national  independence,  —  or  for  the  sole  pur- 
pose, as  he  himself  said,  of  adding  his  little  stock  of  usefulness 
to  the  fund  which  he  hoped  Ireland  possessed. 2   His  whole 

1  Laon  and  Cythna,  canto  ix,  stanza  27. 

2  Letter  to  Hamilton  Rowan,  February  25,  1812. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  187 

early  life,  moreover,  gives  proof  of  his  vital  interest  in  public 
matters,  especially  when  the  welfare  or  liberty  of  any  class  of 
persons  was  affected,  and  when  ill  health  and  enforced  absence 
from  England  compelled  him  to  give  up  active  practical  efforts 
for  the  dissemination  of  his  beliefs  and  to  limit  himself  to  what 
he  considered  less  immediately  effective  teaching  through  poe- 
try, he  lost  not  a  whit,  either  of  his  interest  in  the  events  of  the 
day  or  of  his  desire  to  use  them  in  the  service  of  reform. 

Hellas,  the  poem  which  contains  perhaps  his  greatest  hymn 
of  freedom,  was  inspired  in  the  year  of  his  death  by  the  struggle 
of  the  Greeks  for  independence.  "Common  fame,"  he  says  in 
the  preface,  "is  the  only  authority  which  I  can  allege  for  the 
details  which  form  the  basis  of  the  poem,  and  I  must  trespass 
upon  the  forgiveness  of  my  readers  for  the  display  of  news- 
paper erudition  to  which  I  have  been  reduced."  "Newspaper 
erudition"  in  the  best  sense  was  one  of  Shelley's  strong  assets. 
Deeply  interested,  even  during  his  long  absence,  in  the  political 
situation  in  England,  he  found  in  the  events  reported  in  letters 
or  papers  the  subject-matter  for  much  of  his  poetry.  The 
mingling  of  current  politics  with  chance  circumstance  and  lit- 
erary reminiscence  in  his  occasional  improvisations  is  amus- 
ingly illustrated  by  Mrs.  Shelley's  account  of  the  writing  of 
Swellfoot  the  Tyrant.  The  fortunes  of  Queen  Caroline  and  the 
conduct  of  Lord  Castlereagh,  in  1820  a  subject  of  constant  dis- 
cussion among  Englishmen  at  home  and  abroad,  form  the 
ground-work  of  Shelley's  semi-playful  satire.  The  theme  was 
of  course  especially  fitted  to  arouse  his  indignation;  but  indig- 
nation alone,  if  we  may  trust  Mrs.  Shelley's  account,  did  not 
prompt  the  poem.  While  he  was  one  day  reading  aloud  the 
lately  written  Ode  to  Liberty,  the  poet  was,  in  her  words,  "riot- 
ously accompanied  by  the  grunting  of  a  quantity  of  pigs  " 
brought  for  sale  to  the  fair  of  San  Giuliano.1  The  grunting  ac- 
companiment naturally  suggested  the  chorus  of  the  frogs  in 
Aristophanes;  and  the  result  was  the  political-satirical  drama  of 
Swellfoot,  with  the  pigs  acting  as  chorus  to  the  grotesque  tragedy. 
1  Mrs.  Shelley,  Biographical  and  Critical  Notes,  Poetical  Works,  vol.  i,  p.  lxxxi. 


188    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

This  light  treatment  of  current  history  was,  however,  far 
less  characteristic  of  Shelley  than  the  direct  and  serious  con- 
sideration which  marks  the  bulk  of  his  poetic  utterances  on 
public  matters.  The  events  of  1819,  for  example,  gave  material 
for  many  political  and  didactic  poems.  The  Mask  of  Anarchy 
was  inspired  by  news  of  the  Manchester,  or  Peterloo,  massacre, 
which  event  Shelley  described  as  the  "distant  thunders"  of 
an  oncoming  social  revolution,  fundamentally  due  to  financial 
conditions.1  This  poem,  and  those  of  the  class  to  which  it 
belongs,  which  reveal  his  continuing  sympathy  with  the 
people  and  his  conviction  that  genuine  reform  must  be  eco- 
nomic rather  than  political,  are  also  significant  as  illustrating 
the  practical  action  with  which  he  responded  to  every  chal- 
lenge of  oppression.  When  barred  from  more  direct  effort,  he 
was  always  ready  to  use  his  pen  in  behalf  of  freedom.  The 
pamphleteer  and  reformer  did  not,  it  is  evident,  die  in  Shelley 
when  he  had  printed  the  pamphlet-poem  Queen  Mab.  He  was 
eager,  whenever  opportunity  offered,  to  arouse  the  people  to 
a  perception  of  their  condition  and  the  means  of  remedying  it; 
"to  inculcate  with  fervour  both  the  right  of  resistance  and  the 
duty  of  forbearance"  2  on  which  he  believed  true  progress  to 
depend.  And  though  the  poems  written  with  such  practical 
ends  in  view  are  never  of  the  highest  excellence,  they  are  of 
peculiar  interest  as  showing  the  strength  of  the  tie  that  bound 
Shelley  to  his  age,  his  instant  response  to  the  call  of  need,  and 
his  enduring  conviction  that  "oppression  is  detestable,  as  be- 
ing the  parent  of  starvation,  nakedness,  and  ignorance."  3 

The  close  contact  with  the  life  of  the  time  that  brought 
forth  the  bulk  of  Shelley's  occasional  verse  had  no  small  influ- 
ence in  shaping  his  nobler  poetry.  It  is  possible  that  The  Re- 
volt of  Islam,  written  in  1817,  was,  at  least  in  part,  a  protest 
against  the  political  reaction  then  setting  in,  and  that  it  was 
inspired  by  the  hope  of  arousing  thoughtful  Englishmen  to  a 

1  Preface  to  Mask  of  Anarchy,  Poetical  Works,  Cambridge  ed.,  p.  253. 

2  Letter  to  Leigh  Hunt,  November,  1819. 

3  Mrs.  Shelley,  Biographical  and  Critical  Notes,  Poetical  Works,  vol.  I,  p.  xciv. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  189 

realization  of  the  questions  at  issue.1  But  whatever  may  have 
been  the  genesis  of  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  there  can  be  no  question 
that  his  constant  study  of  contemporary  events  and  condi- 
tions marks  his  later  poems  with  a  steadily  deepening  concep- 
tion of  political  and  social  truth.  Nowhere  is  this  more  evident 
than  in  the  fragments  of  Charles  the  First,  sl  work  undertaken 
by  Shelley  several  years  before  his  death,  and  one  of  the  last 
that  occupied  his  thoughts.  This  play,  which  he  planned  to 
write  "in  the  spirit  of  human  nature,  without  prejudice  or 
passion,"  2  and  which  he  hoped  would  "hold  a  higher  rank  than 
The  Cenci  as  a  work  of  art,"  3  marks  in  the  verisimilitude  of  the 
characters  outlined  in  it  the  later  trend  of  his  imagination 
toward  an  uncompromising  realism.  The  grasp  of  fact  that 
had  early  made  him  a  reformer  was  here  pressed  into  the  ser- 
vice of  poetry,  contemporary  events  and  contemporary  points 
of  view  having  become  a  part  of  his  imaginative  as  of  his  moral 
and  practical  being.  The  lovers  of  freedom  in  England  in  the 
years  following  the  Revolution  saw  dangers  threatening  the 
future  of  liberty  as  grave  as  those  that  had  confronted  their 
forefathers  in  the  time  of  Charles  the  First;  and  Shelley,  deeply 
moved  by  the  issues  at  stake  in  his  own  day,  interpreted  the 
seventeenth  century  with  the  sympathy  and  understanding  of 
a  fellow- worker  in  a  great  cause.  The  words  in  which  the  citi- 
zens watching  the  mask  of  the  Inns  of  Court  contrast  the  mis- 
ery of  the  poor  with  the  luxury  of  the  rich  smack  of  the  bitter- 
ness of  class-feeling  in  England  in  the  time  of  George  the 
Fourth:  — 

"Here  is  the  surfeit  which  to  them  who  earn 
The  niggard  wages  of  the  earth,  scarce  leaves 
The  tithe  that  will  support  them  till  they  crawl 
Back  to  her  cold  hard  bosom.  Here  is  health 
Followed  by  grim  disease,  glory  by  shame, 
Waste  by  lame  famine,  wealth  by  squalid  want, 
And  England's  sin  by  England's  punishment."  4 

1  H.  B.  Forman,  Shelley  Soc.  Pub.,  vol.  i,  part  1,  p.  104. 

2  Letter  to  Thomas  Medwin,  July  20, 1820. 
8  Letter  to  Leigh  Hunt,  January  25,  1822 
4  Charles  the  First,  scene  I,  158-6-1. 


/ 


190    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

The  irony  of  the  nineteenth  century  rings  through  the  biting 
scorn  of  Archy,  the  Court  Fool,  as  he  explains  to  King  and 
Queen  the  nature  of  the  commonwealth  to  be  founded  in  the 
Plantations  by  the  departing  Hampden,  Pym,  and  their 
friends :  — 

"New  devil's  politics. 

Hell  is  the  pattern  of  all  commonwealths: 

Lucifer  was  the  first  republican."  x 

The  grief  for  an  England  who  had  betrayed  herself  in  betray- 
ing alike  the  cause  of  liberty  in  France  and  the  traditions  of 
her  own  people,  finds  expression  in  Hampden's  words :  — 

"I  held  what  I  inherited  in  thee, 
As  pawn  for  that  inheritance  of  freedom 
Which  thou  hast  sold  for  thy  despoiler's  smile."  2 

And  again,  when,  despairing  of  his  country,  he  traces  his  far-off 
hope  in  other  lands,  Hampden  speaks  the  language  of  Shelley, 
hardly  more  in  his  hatred  of  tyranny  than  in  the  humanity 
which  makes  simplicity  of  living  the  condition  of  happiness 
and  freedom;  in  the  spirit  of  the  later  century  he  socializes 
the  romantic  return  to  nature  by  seeking  community -righteous- 
ness no  less  than  personal  satisfaction  in  those 

"lone  regions, 
Where  power's  poor  dupes  and  victims  yet  have  never 
Propitiated  the  savage  fear  of  kings 
WTith  purest  blood  of  noblest  hearts;  whose  dew 
Is  yet  unstained  with  tears  of  those  who  wake 
To  weep  each  day  the  wrongs  on  which  it  dawns; 
Whose  sacred  silent  air  owns  yet  no  echo 
Of  formal  blasphemies;  nor  impious  rites 
Wrest  man's  free  worship,  from  the  God  who  loves, 
To  the  poor  worm  who  envies  us  his  love!"  3 

Shelley's  divination  of  the  moral  and  spiritual  forces  that 
were  to  control  the  future  appeared  very  clearly  in  the  ideal  of 
character  that  he  presented  again  and  again  as  creating  and 
conditioning  the  new  society.  The  lack  of  any  disinterested 
enthusiasm  was  peculiarly  characteristic  of  his  age,  a  sluggish 

1  Charles  the  First,  scene  n,  367-9.  2  Ibid.,  scene  rv,  3-5. 

8  Ibid.,  25-34. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  191 

time  moved  neither  by  ardent  religious  faith  nor  by  high  hopes 
for  the  earthly  future  of  the  race.  The  teachings  of  Christian- 
ity, discredited  by  the  social  and  political  systems  with  which 
they  were  popularly  identified,  were  accepted  as  matter-of- 
course  by  the  many,  as  forms  by  thinkers,  and  by  the  spiritually 
self-indulgent  as  offering  a  refuge  from  an  unequal  struggle 
with  the  world.  The  past  gave  no  help.  The  asceticism  of  the 
Puritan,  the  class-culture  of  the  Renaissance,  and  the  aristo- 
cratic humanity  of  Greece  could  at  most  suggest  ends  which 
the  new  democracy,  with  its  power  over  the  forces  of  nature  and 
its  sense  of  human  brotherhood,  must  reach  by  untried  ways. 
In  this  age,  perplexed  and  under  a  decent  conformity  pro- 
foundly skeptical  in  temper,  Shelley,  like  Wordsworth,  ap- 
pealed to  the  generous-minded  by  presenting  to  them  the  two- 
fold gospel  of  the  supremacy  of  spiritual  forces  and  the  inherent 
right  of  mankind  to  happiness.  The  spiritual  he  conceived  now 
as  controlling  the  phenomena  through  which  it  reveals  itself, 
now  as  an  illuminating  radiance  subdued  to  our  understanding 
as  it  is  revealed  by  the  form  embodying  it.  In  this  conviction 
of  the  reality  of  the  unseen  he  went  hardly  further  than  Words- 
worth, with  whose  belief  in  the  immanent  "wisdom  and  spirit 
of  the  universe  "  l  and  its  revelation  through  the  lives  of  men  he 
is  at  one.  But  far  more  consistently  than  Wordsworth  he 
united  the  sense  of 

"That  Light  whose  smile  kindles  the  Universe, 
That  Beauty  in  which  all  things  work  and  move,"  2 

with  a  recognition  of  the  boundless  possibilities  of  actual  life. 
His  hope  for  mankind  rested  in  the  first  place  on  his  profound 
conviction  of  the  unity  between  the  life  of  nature  and  that  of 
man.   In  his  early  verse  he  wrote :  — 

"This  world  is  the  nurse  of  all  we  know, 
This  world  is  the  mother  of  all  we  feel."  3 

His  greatest  hero,  Prometheus,  triumphed  because,  in  con- 
quering hate,  he  interpreted  to  itself  a  universe  bound  together 
1  Prelude,  book  I,  401.         2  Adonais,  stanza  liv.        3  On  Death,  13-14. 


192    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  to  mankind  by  the  tie  of  a  common  nature.  But  Shelley's 
interest  centered  far  less  in  the  "dear  green  earth"  in  which 
men's  hearts  are  now  at  home  than  in  the  progressive  revela- 
tions of  truth  possible  to  the  expanding  mind  of  the  race. 
Where  Wordsworth  accepted  as  the  measure  of  human  capacity 
the  moderate  happiness  of  a  life  passed  in  natural  conditions, 
Shelley  declared  the  right  of  every  man  to  the  fullest  develop- 
ment of  all  his  powers.  In  his  belief  in  men's  capacity  for 
growth  and  their  right  to  freedom,  he  was  closely  allied  with 
the  Utilitarians,  who,  not  yet  under  the  banner  of  a  name, 
were  asserting  the  importance  of  liberty  and  culture  for  the 
attainment  of  human  happiness.  And  while  he  widened  the 
sphere  of  men's  intellectual  and  practical  activities,  he  did 
not  at  all  weaken  the  foundations  of  their  morality.  The 
simplicity  and  spontaneity  that  mark  the  actions  of  his  typi- 
cal characters,  though  at  first  sight  purely  natural,  are  in  the 
last  analysis  among  those  hardly-won  virtues  which  form  the 
basis  of  character;  they  are  possible  only  through  long  in- 
tellectual and  social  discipline,  are  the  outcome  of  right  ways 
of  living  and  organizing  life,  are  the  gift,  not  of  unaided  hu- 
man nature  but  of  the  highest  and  most  far-reaching  civiliza- 
tion. 

It  was  inevitable  that  one  who  believed  in  freedom  as  firmly 
as  did  Shelley  should  think  much  of  the  nature,  rights  and  func- 
tions of  the  individual.  He  declared  that  the  essence  of  person- 
ality consists  in  its  difference  from  others  over  and  above  the 
likeness  it  bears  to  them,  and  that  the  most  important  part  of 
moral  science  lies  in  understanding  the  general  effects  of  men's 
peculiar  characteristics  and  the  tendencies  of  these  character- 
istics in  particular  cases;  the  differences  of  men,  rather  than  ac- 
tions due  to  their  habitual  and  superficial  resemblances,  are  in 
his  eyes  the  vital  forces  "which  make  human  life  what  it  is,  and 
are  the  fountains  of  all  the  good  and  evil  with  which  its  entire 
surface  is  so  widely  and  impartially  overspread."  1  Individu- 
ality of  character  and  conduct  thus  becomes  the  condition  of 
1  Speculations  on  Morals,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  318. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  193 

progress,  which  results  far  more  from  the  development  of  men's 
capacities  than  from  their  acceptance  of  the  common  stock  of 
wisdom.  This  assertion  of  the  right  of  the  individual  to  the 
fullest  measure  of  self-realization,  the  plea  for  which  rested  on 
grounds  of  social  even  more  than  of  personal  morality,  was 
saved  from  the  capricious  antinomianism  into  which  it  might 
easily  have  fallen  by  Shelley's  acceptance  of  reason  as  the 
supreme  power  in  the  ordering  of  life.  In  The  Assassins,  written 
when  he  was  nineteen,  he  said  of  the  members  of  the  early 
Christian  community:  "They  esteemed  the  human  understand- 
ing to  be  the  paramount  rule  of  human  conduct.  ...  It  ap- 
peared impossible  to  them  that  any  doctrine  could  be  subver- 
sive of  social  happiness  which  is  not  capable  of  being  confuted 
by  arguments  derived  from  the  nature  of  existing  things."  l  In 
allegiance  to  reason  and  the  truth  "derived  from  the  nature  of 
existing  things,"  the  individual  found  both  discipline  and  ful- 
fillment, and  thus  became  essentially  social  and  moral. 

Yet  even  reason,  highly  as  Shelley  esteemed  it,  was  in  his 
eyes  chiefly  of  value  as  leading  to  the  imaginative  sympathy 
which  frees  individuality  from  its  narrowing  limitations  by 
breaking  down  all  barriers  between  the  self  and  others.  En- 
trance "into  the  meditations,  designs  and  destinies  of  some- 
thing beyond  ourselves,"  he  made  the  essential  condition  of 
that  enlargement  of  mind  on  which  virtue,  personal  or  social, 
depends.  Disinterested  care  for  others  he  considered  the  most 
elementary  form  of  the  benevolent  propensities,  the  basis  of 
everything  that  has  refined  and  exalted  humanity;  and  an 
action  or  a  motive  to  action  he  defined  as  virtuous  only  in 
"so  far  as  it  is  disinterested,  or  partakes  ...  of  the  nature  of 
generalized  self-love." 2  In  a  characteristic  passage  in  The 
Coliseum  he  says:  "There  is  a  circle  which  comprehends,  as 
well  as  one  which  mutually  excludes,  all  things  which  feel.  And, 
with  respect  to  man,  his  public  and  his  private  happiness  con- 
sists in  diminishing  the  circumference  which  includes  those 

1  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  220. 

*  Proposals  for  an  Association,  Prose  Works,  vol.  I,  p.  381. 


194    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

resembling  himself,  until  they  become  one  with  him,  and  he  with 
them."  x  The  originality  of  his  characters  consists,  not  in  their 
assertion  of  self,  but  in  the  enlargement  of  their  circle  of  indi- 
viduality till  their  interests  are  identical  with  those  of  their 
fellow-men. 

This  universal  humanity,  marking  all  his  greatest  heroes,  is 
nowhere  more  evident  than  in  the  many  descriptive  references 
to  Jesus,  who,  as  a  man,  stood  to  Shelley  in  his  mature  years 
for  all  that  is  good.  And  Shelley  saw  in  Jesus  not  only  the 
embodiment  of  goodness,  the  epitome  of  those  qualities  for 
which 

"  The  wise,  the  mild,  the  lofty,  and  the  just " 2 

have  so  often  suffered  in  his  name,  but  the  being  invincible  in 
gentleness  and  benignity  who  has  "influenced  in  the  most 
memorable  manner  the  opinions  and  the  fortunes  of  the 
human  species." 3  Faith  in  the  transforming  power  of  noble 
character  was,  indeed,  a  chief  article  in  Shelley's  creed,  sup- 
porting his  courage  when  he  was  forced  to  turn  from  what 
he  considered  the  more  practical  field  of  moral  and  political 
science  to  indirect  teaching  through  poetry,  and  supplying  him 
with  those  "beautiful  idealisms  of  moral  excellence"  in  which 
he  trusted  to  prepare  men's  minds  for  the  reception  of  the 
"reasoned  principles  of  moral  conduct"4  that  would  ulti- 
mately bring  about  the  establishment  of  a  new  society. 

Shelley's  confidence  in  the  power  of  thought  to  redeem  the 
world,  like  his  faith  in  the  social  value  of  individuality,  rested 
ultimately  on  his  belief  that  society  is  essentially  moral  in 
nature,  and  that  government,  in  so  far  as  it  is  more  than  a 
necessary  evil,  is  a  moral  institution.  The  virtue  of  the  state 
and  the  virtue  of  the  private  person  were  identical  in  the  eyes  of 
the  follower  of  Godwin,  since  both  alike  propose  as  their  end  the 
production  of  the  greatest  pleasure  to  the  greatest  number  of 

1  Prose  Works,  vol.  in,  p.  36. 

2  Prometheus  Unbound,  act  I,  605. 

3  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  u,  p.  339. 

4  Preface  to  Prometheus  Unbound. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  195 

sensitive  beings,  find  their  sanction  in  the  perfection  with  which 
they  fulfill  this  end,  and  attain  perfection  only  as  the  happiness 
they  produce  is  of  the  highest  spiritual  order.  The  moral  quali- 
ties which  any  government  should  aim  to  develop  are  neither 
more  nor  less  than  the  elementary  virtues  on  which  individual 
goodness  depends:  the  benevolence  which  is  "the  desire  to  be 
the  author  of  good,"  and  the  justice  which  is  "an  apprehension 
of  the  manner  in  which  that  good  is  to  be  done."  l 

This  identification  of  public  and  private  virtue  is  of  course 
not  new  with  Shelley :  Plato  had  made  the  good  of  society  the 
test  of  virtue;  Shaftesbury's  speculations  a  hundred  years  be- 
fore were  fired  with  enthusiasm  for  a  social  ideal  of  goodness; 
the  acceptance  of  general  rather  than  personal  ends  inspired 
the  thinkers  of  the  eighteenth  century  in  their  plans  for  a  recon- 
structed world.  But  Shelley  carried  out  the  principles  of  his 
predecessors  to  a  conclusion  more  truly  democratic  than  theirs : 
where  they  had  asked  of  the  individual  the  larger  social  virtues, 
he  further  demanded  of  society  the  tenderness  and  refinement 
of  the  noblest  individual  character.  The  enlargement  of  every 
man's  experience  by  the  appropriation  of  new  ideas  and  ideals, 
the  exaltation  of  it  by  the  contemplation  of  beauty,  he  saw  to 
be  as  important  to  the  well-being  of  the  community  as  to  that 
of  the  individual.  The  basis  of  political  and  social  as  well  as  of 
private  morality  he  found  in  the  breaking  down,  through  imag- 
inative sympathy,  of  the  barriers  between  the  self  and  the  non- 
self.  Sympathy  and  social  justice  thus  became  with  him  synon- 
ymous terms,  extending  beyond  the  realms  of  daily  personal 
intercourse  on  the  one  hand  into  the  more  artificial  and  formal 
organization  of  mankind,  and  on  the  other  into  men's  relations 
with  the  animal  world.  Because  of  the  essential  humanity  that 
binds  men  together,  he  held  political,  social,  and  religious 
distinctions  to  be  without  significance,  or,  in  so  far  as  they 
hindered  any  one  from  doing  every  possible  good  to  every  other 
creature,  positively  harmful.  Even  domestic  affection  was  of 
value  only  as  it  might  draw  those  outside  its  immediate  circle 
1  Speculations  on  Morals,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  306. 


196    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

into  the  circumference  of  sympathy,  and  so  generalize  or  so- 
cialize the  narrower  emotion. 

Shelley's  vivid  sense  of  men's  community  in  nature  and  their 
potential  unity  in  purpose  appeared  very  clearly  in  his  faith  in 
their  joint  action  and  common  experience.  He  delighted,  in  his 
poetry,  to  present  those  great  occasions  "when  the  hearts  of 
individuals  vibrate  .  .  .  for  a  people,"  *  and  the  multitude  is 
united  in  a  single  impulse  of  gratitude  and  triumph.  It  is  in 
such  times  as  these  that  visions  of  truth  are  clearest  and  most 
uplifting,  and  that  the  human  mind  presses  close  to  the  mystic 
sense  of  ultimate  reality.  Cythna  addressing  the  thronging 
multitude  united  in  the  joy  of  victory  becomes  the  "pro- 
phetess of  love."  The  Earth  joining  with  all  the  forces  of 
nature  and  of  life  in  the  hymn  of  universal  thanksgiving  pene- 
trates to  the  very  heart  of  humanity,  and  sees  for  the  moment 
the  spirit  that  unites  mankind  supreme  in  all  its  various 
manifestations :  — 

"Man,  oh,  not  men!  a  chain  of  linked  thought, 
Of  love  and  might  to  be  divided  not. 


Man,  one  harmonious  soul  of  many  a  soul, 

Whose  nature  is  its  own  divine  controul, 

Where  all  things  flow  to  all,  as  rivers  to  the  sea."  2 

Nor  is  this  a  mere  rhapsody.  The  principles  which  Shelley 
embodied  in  his  poetry  gave  him  the  measure  which  he  con- 
stantly applied  to  the  judgment  of  actual  events.  The  moral 
and  social  value  of  associated  endeavor  as  such  he  clearly 
recognized  in  the  statement  that,  whether  Ireland's  effort  for 
Catholic  Emancipation  succeeded  or  not,  the  general  interest 
in  the  subject  formed  an  occasion  which  "the  ardent  votary  of 
the  religion  of  Philanthropy  dare  not  leave  unseized,"  because 
in  enthusiasm  for  a  common  cause  "individual  interest  has,  in 
a  certain  degree,  quitted  individual  concern  to  generalize  itself 
with  universal  feeling."  3  Again  in  the  letter  entitled  The  Death 

1  Proposals  for  an  Association,  Prose  Works,  vol.  i,  p.  367. 

2  Prometheus  Unbound,  act  iv,  394-402. 

8  Proposals  for  an  Association,  Prose  Works,  vol.  I,  p.  368. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  197 

of  the  Princess  Charlotte,  he  said  that  common  mourning  for 
any  public  calamity  is  good  because  it  "helps  to  maintain  that 
connexion  between  one  man  and  another,  and  all  men  consid- 
ered as  a  whole,  which  is  the  bond  of  social  life."  1 

The  conception  of  man  as  an  essentially  moral  being,  and  of 
mankind  as  fundamentally  united  in  moral  nature,  lay  at  the 
heart  of  Shelley's  idea  of  happiness.  Happiness  he  made 
depend  on  the  satisfaction  of  mind  and  soul  far  more  than  on 
the  gratification  of  bodily  wants.  "Your  physical  wants,"  he 
wrote,  "are  few,  whilst  those  of  your  mind  and  heart  cannot 
be  numbered  or  described,  from  their  multitude  and  complica- 
tion." 2  On  the  supremacy  of  these  higher  wants  and  on  the 
need  of  infinite  activity  if  they  are  to  be  gratified,  his  chief 
hope  for  the  progress  as  well  as  the  happiness  of  mankind  ulti- 
mately rested.  In  his  prose  works  as  well  as  in  his  poems  he 
repeated  again  and  again  the  idea  inspiring  Cythna's  picture 
of  the  future :  — 

"  Our  toil  from  thought  all  glorious  forms  shall  cull, 
To  make  this  Earth,  our  home,  more  beautiful, 
And  Science,  and  her  sister  Poesy, 
Shall  clothe  in  light  the  fields  and  cities  of  the  free!  "  8 

The  last  act  of  Prometheus  Unbound  is  saved  from  the  blight 
of  fatuous  satisfaction  in  achievement  by  the  energy  of  the 
spiritual  forces  that  become  operative  when  once  humanity 
is  freed  from  the  tyranny  of  power  and  of  material  necessity. 
This  world  toward  which  he  believed  the  race  to  be  moving  — 
a  world  made  infinitely  rich  by  science  and  infinitely  beautiful 
by  art  —  is  marked  by  the  simplicity  and  moderation  of 
physical  desires.  He  condemned  the  morality  of  his  day  because 
men  were  content  to  remain  under  the  tyranny  of  physical 
wants,  "meaner"  than  the  high  desires  of  which  they  were  cap- 
able, and  because  they  forgot  the  ends  of  their  passions  in 
indulgence  of  the  passions  themselves.    He  even  anticipated 

1  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  103. 

1  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  363. 

1  Laon  and  Cythna,  canto  v,  stanza  51,  5. 


198    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

Matthew  Arnold's  later  warning  against  the  over-develop- 
ment of  the  machinery  of  living.  The  evils  flourishing  in  his 
own  day  he  regarded  as  in  great  part  the  result  of  the 
mechanized  organization  of  a  society  that  in  perfecting  the 
art  of  living  had  ceased  to  live.  His  sense  of  the  futility  of 
modern  civilization  points  his  description  of  Hell,  "a  city 
much  like  London,"  1  where  in  an  atmosphere  "thick,  infected, 
joy-dispelling,"  ministers,  lawyers,  dandies,  women,  rich  and 
poor  pursue  their  common  purpose, 

"Mining,  like  moles,  through  mind,  and  there 
Scoop  palace-caverns  vast,  where  Care 

In  throned  state  is  ever  dwelling."  2 

But  the  mechanized  life  that  avails  to  multiply  men's  posses- 
sions without  increasing  their  joy  is  pictured  no  more  vividly 
than  are  the  conditions  that  would  inevitably  produce  beings 
"good,  great  and  joyous,  beautiful  and  free." 3  Foremost  among 
these  conditions  are  leisure  and  liberty,  —  human  rights  as 
inalienable  as  food  and  shelter,4  and  the  knowledge  and  beauty, 
the  competence  and  health,  which  are  the  results  of  natural  liv- 
ing. Even  more  characteristic  of  this  world  of  Shelley's  vision 
than  its  physical,  intellectual  and  aesthetic  opportunities,  was 
the  justice  that  prevailed  in  it,  a  justice  which  foreshadows 
Maeterlinck  as  truly  as  it  echoes  Godwin.  It  was  in  the  best 
sense  a  respecter  of  persons:  "to  consider,"  he  says,  "under  all 
the  circumstances  and  consequences  of  a  particular  case,  how 
the  greatest  quantity  and  purest  quality  of  happiness  will  ensue 
from  any  action;  [this]  is  to  be  just,  and  there  is  no  other  jus- 
tice." 5  Such  justice,  concerned  with  the  particular  rather  than 
the  general  and  valuing  understanding  rather  than  judgment, 
was  naturally  the  supreme  law  of  a  society  the  cornerstone  of 
which  was  faith  in  individuality  and  in  knowledge.  This 
conception  of  justice  Shelley  applied  to  the  material  as  to  the 

1  Peter  Bell  the  Third,  part  3,  stanza  1. 

2  Ibid.,  stanza  23. 

*  Prometheus  Unbound,  act  rv,  577. 

4  Declaration  of  Rights,  29,  Prose  Works,  vol.  I,  p.  397. 

6  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  347. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  199 

spiritual  conditions  of  men  in  the  actual  world.  Freedom  he 
insisted  was  not  only  an  abstract  and  political  right;  it  also 
involved  possession  of  the  means  of  livelihood  and  full  oppor- 
tunity for  the  development  of  mind  and  soul.  In  The  Mask  of 
Anarchy  he  defines  its  scope:  — 

"For  the  labourer  thou  art  bread. 
And  a  comely  table  spread 
From  his  daily  labour  come 
To  a  neat  and  happy  home. 

"Thou  art  clothes,  and  fire,  and  food 
For  the  trampled  multitude  — 


'Science,  Poetry  and  Thought 
Are  thy  lamps;  they  make  the  lot 
Of  the  dwellers  in  a  cot 
So  serene,  they  curse  it  not." 

'Spirit,  Patience,  Gentleness, 
All  that  can  adorn  and  bless, 
Art  thou  —  let  deeds  not  words  express 
Thine  exceeding  loveliness."  * 


These  lines,  inspired  by  the  horrors  of  the  Peterloo  massacre, 
give  literal  expression  to  his  conviction  that,  if  society  is  to 
fulfill  its  proper  function,  the  share  of  every  man  in  the  prod- 
ucts of  his  labor  must  be  large  enough  to  insure  his  normal 
development. 

Living  in  an  age  when  the  luxury  of  the  few  was  offset  by  the 
want  of  the  many,  Shelley  gave  much  thought  to  such  practical 
questions  as  money-earning  and  the  distribution  of  the  means 
and  rewards  of  labor  as  a  condition  of  the  higher  human  well- 
being.  "The  rights  of  man,"  he  declared  in  his  youth,  "are 
liberty,  and  an  equal  participation  of  the  commonage  of  na- 
ture." 2  The  object  of  government  and  the  measure  of  its  suc- 
cess, he  said  later,  "is  not  merely  the  quantity  of  happiness 
enjoyed  by  individuals  as  sensitive  beings,  but  the  mode  in 
which  it  should  be  distributed  among  them  as  social  beings. 

1  Mask  of  Anarchy,  stanzas  54-64. 

2  Declaration  of  Rights,  3,  Prose  Works,  vol.  i,  p.  393. 


200    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

It  is  not  enough,  if  such  a  coincidence  can  be  conceived  as 
possible,  that  one  person  or  class  of  persons  should  enjoy  the 
highest  happiness,  whilst  another  is  suffering  a  disproportion- 
ate degree  of  misery.  It  is  necessary  that  the  happiness  pro- 
duced by  the  common  efforts,  and  preserved  by  the  common 
care,  should  be  distributed  according  to  the  just  claims  of  each 
individual;  if  not,  although  the  quantity  produced  should  be 
the  same,  the  end  of  society  would  remain  unfulfilled."  x  The 
failure  of  the  economic  system  of  his  day  to  give  happiness  to 
rich  or  poor  served  in  Shelley's  eyes  for  its  sufficient  indictment, 
the  crimes  that  degraded  its  poverty  and  the  luxury  that  cor- 
rupted its  wealth  uniting  to  condemn,  not  only  the  glaring  in- 
equality of  condition  on  which  it  rested,  but  the  whole  super- 
structure of  social  forms  built  on  that  unstable  foundation. 

Shelley's  belief  in  the  moral  constitution  of  society  naturally 
resulted  in  his  insistence  on  moral  and  intellectual  methods  of 
reform.  Liberty  and  happiness  he  repeatedly  declared  impos- 
sible till  every  chain  of  "habit  and  superstition"  had  been 
broken.  But  these  chains,  forged  by  institutional  tyranny,  he 
thought  could  be  cast  off  only  when  men  had  themselves  be- 
come good;  had  learned  to  "contemplate  actions  and  objects  as 
they  really  are,"  2  and  to  establish  the  reign  of  justice  by  them- 
selves becoming  just.  The  individual  and  society  can  therefore 
advance  no  faster  than  moral  and  intellectual  culture;  reforms 
can  be  effected  only  as  character  is  ready  for  them.  "The  con- 
sequences of  the  immediate  extension  of  the  elective  franchise 
to  every  male  adult,  would  be,"  he  said  in  1817,  "to  place 
power  in  the  hands  of  men  who  have  been  rendered  brutal  and 
torpid  and  ferocious  by  ages  of  slavery,"  and  so  to  give  to  the 
demagogue  what  should  belong  to  the  legislator.3  Though  he 
believed  a  pure  republic  far  preferable  to  a  monarchy,  yet  he 
thought  no  plan  could  be  more  unreasonable  and  less  likely  to 
bring  about  good  results  than  the  abolition  of  "the  regal  and 

1  Speculations  on  Morals,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  pp.  302-3. 

2  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  364. 

3  A  Proposal  for  Putting  Reform  to  the  Vote,  Prose  Works,  vol.  u,  p.  95. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  201 

the  aristocratical  branches  of  our  constitution,  before  the 
public  mind,  through  many  gradations  of  improvement,  shall 
have  arrived  at  the  maturity  which  can  disregard  these  sym- 
bols of  its  childhood."  l  Violence  he  again  and  again  deprecated, 
as  not  only  wrong  in  itself  but  as  the  very  means  to  produce 
wretchedness  and  slavery.  The  French  Revolution  gave  him 
constant  illustrations  of  the  evils  that  come  from  defending 
right  by  methods  which  could  be  used  to  uphold  tyranny.  In 
addressing  the  Irish,  he  urged  them  to  endure  their  wrongs  till 
the  times  were  ripe  for  change;  to  remember  that  they  were  not 
fit  for  higher  things  so  long  as  they  were  willing  to  employ  force 
in  any  cause  whatsoever,  and  to  lay  the  only  sure  foundation 
of  a  better  order  of  society,  by  forming  "habits  of  sobriety, 
regularity,  and  thought."  2  In  order  that  these  habits  might 
be  established  and  strengthened,  even  in  the  unrest  and  danger 
then  prevailing  in  Ireland,  he  insisted  that  the  work  of  every 
one,  however  employed,  should  be  exerted  in  its  accustomed 
manner,  and  that  the  public  communication  of  the  truth  for 
which  the  nation  was  struggling  should  in  no  way  impede  the 
established  usages  of  society,  though  it  was  fitted  in  the  end 
to  do  them  away.3 

The  history  of  Christianity  afforded  him  even  clearer  proof 
than  the  French  Revolution  or  the  conditions  in  Ireland  that 
the  greatest  and  most  spiritual  of  reforms  must  fail  when  men 
have  not  been  prepared  by  moral  and  intellectual  training  to 
understand  and  act  on  the  truth  which  they  have  nominally 
accepted.  The  "mighty  hopes"  of  Jesus  for  "the  abolition  of 
artificial  distinctions  among  mankind"  were,  he  thought,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  doomed  to  disappointment  because  the 
system  which  he  and  his  immediate  followers  tried  to  establish 
was  one  which  "must  result  from,  rather  than  precede,  the 
moral  improvement  of  human  kind." 4  The  growth  of  equality 

1  A  Proposal  for  Putting  Reform  to  the  Vote,  Prose  Works,  vol.  u,  p.  96. 

2  An  Address  to  the  Irish  People,  Prose  Works,  vol.  i,  p.  331. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  345. 

4  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  pp.  369-71. 


202    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

in  his  own  day  he  believed  to  result  from  the  increase  in  it  of 
justice,  the  increase  of  justice  in  its  turn  coming  from  the  wider 
spread  of  knowledge.1  Since  reform  seemed  to  him  possible 
only  when  the  minds  of  men  were  prepared  for  change,  he  con- 
sidered it  folly  to  act  on  any  belief  till  it  was  supported  by  in- 
telligent public  opinion.  "Nothing,"  he  said,  in  his  Address  to 
the  Irish  People,  "  can  be  more  rash  and  thoughtless,  than  to  shew 
in  ourselves  singular  instances  of  any  particular  doctrine,  before 
the  general  mass  of  the  people  are  so  convinced  by  the  reasons 
of  the  doctrine,  that  it  will  be  no  longer  singular"; 2  and  in  a 
letter  written  a  little  earlier  he  exclaimed:  "How  useless  to 
attempt  by  singular  examples  to  renovate  the  face  of  society, 
until  reasoning  has  made  so  comprehensive  a  change  as  to 
emancipate  the  experimentalist  from  the  resulting  evils,  and  the 
prejudice  with  which  his  opinion  (which  ought  to  have  weight, 
for  the  sake  of  virtue)  would  be  heard  by  the  immense  major- 
ity!" 3  His  belief  that  "force  must  rule  till  right  is  ready"  is 
illustrated  in  its  various  aspects  by  the  great  struggles  between 
good  and  evil  that  he  pictures  in  his  poetry.  The  tyrant  was 
restored  to  power  in  The  Revolt  of  Islam  because  the  world  was 
not  ready  for  freedom;  Prometheus  triumphed  over  Jupiter  only 
when  he  shuddered  to  hear  repeated  the  curse  that  he  had  him- 
self uttered;  Beatrice  Cenci  became  a  tragic  character  because 
she  failed  in  the  forgiveness  that  would  make  her  most  truly 
human.  All  that  Shelley  wrote  is,  indeed,  one  long  plea  for  the 
development  of  the  perfect  understanding,  which,  by  casting  out 
fear  and  conquering  hate,  is  alone  able  to  overcome  injustice. 

But  though  he  stanchly  upheld  the  necessity  of  moral  prep- 
aration before  reform  is  possible,  Shelley  was  a  tireless  foe  of 
oppression  and  an  impassioned  propagandist  of  the  ideas  on 
which  he  believed  fundamental  changes  in  the  social  conditions 
of  his  time  to  depend.  For  the  improvement  of  the  world  he  re- 
lied only  on  truth;  but  on  truth  active  and  militant,  the  foe  to 

1  Essay  on  Christianity,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  369. 

2  Prose  Works,  vol.  I,  p.  345. 

3  "Letter  to  Elizabeth  Hitchener,"  October  8,  1811. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  203 

intellectual  acquiescence  in  wrong  as  it  is  to  every  form  of  tyr- 
anny and  prejudice.  Believing  that  if  mankind  is  to  attain  to 
any  substantial  measure  of  happiness,  "the  system  of  society  as 
it  exists  at  present,  must  be  overthrown  from  the  foundations 
with  all  its  superstructure  of  maxims  and  of  forms,"  l  he  made 
no  mental  compromises  with  the  established  order  of  things. 
Intellectual  resistance  to  evil  he  regarded,  indeed,  as  the  first 
duty  of  man,  lying  beyond  any  possible  control  by  the  state, 
and  the  more  sacred  as  the  nature  of  truth  prevented  its  advo- 
cates from  using  arms  in  its  defense.  Untrammeled  expression 
of  opinion  and  open  discussion  of  all  subjects  thus  seemed  to 
Shelley  the  essential  conditions  of  progress,  because  only  by 
their  means  could  ideas  be  generally  disseminated  and  truth 
brought  home  to  the  waiting  minds  of  men.  His  speeches  in 
Ireland  and  his  comments  on  affairs  in  England  were  a  continu- 
ous plea  for  free  discussion  of  the  questions  at  stake;  the  asso- 
ciation that  he  formed  for  effecting  Catholic  Emancipation  was 
planned  primarily  as  an  association  for  discussion  of  the  subject 
and  dissemination  of  knowledge  about  it;  he  ceaselessly  upheld 
the  right  of  the  press  "to  publish  any  opinion  on  any  subject 
which  the  writer  may  entertain,"  2  and  declared  that  there 
could  be  no  middle  way  between  its  entire  emancipation  and  a 
suppression  of  free  speech  which  must  be  fatal  to  progress. 
Given  the  right  to  unhampered  expression  of  opinion,  he 
trusted  absolutely  in  the  power  of  truth  to  protect  itself  against 
error.  Falsehood  he  conceived  of  as  the  scorpion  that  would  in 
the  end  sting  itself  to  death,  while  truth  contains  in  itself  the 
elements  of  permanence  as  well  as  of  virtue.  Applying  this  doc- 
trine to  the  control  of  the  press,  he  asks  in  a  passage  that  re- 
minds us  of  John  Stuart  Mill,  whether  those  in  favor  of  censor- 
ing it  cannot  see  that  "  what  is  rational  will  stand  by  its  reason, 
and  what  is  true  stand  by  its  truth,  as  all  that  is  foolish  will  fall 
by  its  folly,  and  all  that  is  false  be  controverted  by  its  own  false- 
hood." 3   Nowhere  is  Shelley's  position  as  to  the  nature  and 

1  "Letter  to  Leigh  Hunt,"  May  1,  1820. 

2  An  Address  to  the  Irish  People,  Prose  Works,  vol.  I,  p.  350. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  361. 


204    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

methods  of  reform  more  clearly  expressed  than  in  A  Proposal 
for  Putting  Reform  to  the  Vote,  where  he  insisted  that  the  advo- 
cates of  change  must  learn  the  will  of  the  majority  and,  if  that 
majority  was  against  them,  must  abide  by  the  decision  till  such 
time  as  the  nation  was  prepared  to  accept  their  policies.  The 
minority  thus  lives  under  a  double  law:  it  must  submit  to  the 
rule  of  force  till  it  can  make  right  prevail,  and  it  must  make 
every  effort,  even  to  the  sacrifice  of  goods  and  life,  to  bring  what 
it  believes  to  be  right,  home  to  the  minds  and  consciences  of  its 
opponents.  Its  work  is  complete  only  when  right  has  been 
transformed  into  will  and  an  enlightened  society  desires  what 
its  clearer-sighted  leaders  have  long  seen  to  be  good. 

By  making  intellectual  enlightenment  the  agent  of  moral 
culture,  Shelley  not  only  carried  on  the  work  of  the  thinkers  of 
the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  but  supplemented  the 
weakness  of  the  social  and  aesthetic  systems  laid  down  by  Cole- 
ridge and  Wordsworth.  Imaginatively  sympathetic  with  them, 
deeply  influenced  by  their  writings,  and  agreeing  in  the  main 
with  their  conception  of  poetry  and  its  relation  to  life,  his  trust 
in  reason  led  him  to  a  perception  of  the  wholeness  and  unity  of 
mental  activity  which  they  failed  to  reach.  Coleridge  made  the 
merely  logical  understanding  infinitely  inferior  to  the  philo- 
sophical faculty  of  spiritual  intuition,  —  to  the  soul's  eye  by 
which  alone  truth  can  be  perceived.  Wordsworth  described  it 
as  the  power  that  analyzed  and  dissected:  at  worst  the  degrad- 
ing curiosity  that  led  its  victim  to  "peep  and  botanize"  1  in 
sacred  places,  at  best  the  bondsman  of  the  imagination,  waiting 
until  its  theoretic  knowledge  should  put  on  "the  form  of  flesh 
and  blood"  and  become  "a  dear  and  genuine  inmate  of  the 
household  of  man."  2  Shelley,  like  his  great  predecessors,  con- 
sidered the  imagination  the  supreme  intellectual  power,  the 
explorer  of  the  unknown  regions  of  matter  and  spirit,  and  the 
discoverer  of  those  truths  of  which  practical  life  is  later  to  be 
the  embodiment.  But  though  he  was  at  one  with  Wordsworth 

1  A  Poet's  Epitaph,  19. 

2  Preface  to  the  second  edition  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads. 


SHELLEY'S    DEMOCRACY  205 

and  Coleridge  as  to  the  peculiar  office  of  the  imagination, 
nature  and  training  made  it  impossible  for  him  to  recognize  it 
as  in  any  way  antagonistic  to  reason.  From  his  teachers  in  the 
eighteenth  century  he  had  inherited  an  enthusiastic  belief  in 
the  power  of  knowledge  and  intellect.  Mrs.  Shelley  testified 
that  "he  deliberated  at  one  time  whether  he  should  dedicate 
himself  to  poetry  or  metaphysics."  l  Though  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  the  question  was  decided  before  the  deliberation 
began,  the  fact  of  his  indecision  marks  the  strength  of  his 
passion  for  knowledge.  Without  this  passion  he  was,  indeed, 
singularly  likely  to  have  lost  himself  in  the  mazes  of  a  semi- 
imaginative  pseudo-science.  Like  many  of  the  poets  and  think- 
ers of  the  time,  he  was  at  first  interested  in  the  occult  as  well  as 
in  the  scientific  aspects  of  knowledge.  Characteristic  of  his 
curiosity  as  to  the  mysterious,  is  the  account  in  Alastor  of  the 
fascination  which  led  him  as  a  boy  to  strive  to  penetrate  the 
inmost  secrets  of  nature :  — 

"  I  have  watched 
Thy  shadow,  and  the  darkness  of  thy  steps, 
And  my  heart  ever  gazes  on  the  depth 
Of  thy  deep  mysteries.  I  have  made  my  bed 
In  charnels  and  on  coffins, 


Hoping  to  still  these  obstinate  questionings 
Of  thee  and  thine,  by  forcing  some  lone  ghost, 
Thy  messenger,  to  render  up  the  tale 
Of  what  we  are."  2 

But  just  as  the  passion  for  humanity  saved  him,  the  most 
inwardly  intense  of  the  poets  of  his  generation,  from  the  ex- 
cesses of  an  anti-social  romanticism,  so  he  was  rescued  from  the 
tyranny  of  the  fantastic  and  imaginary  by  his  love  of  truth  and 
his  delight  in  the  exercise  of  his  reason.  He  is  thus  able  clearly 
to  recognize  the  part  that  thought  plays  in  the  intellectual  and 
social  life.  He  defines  reason  "as  mind  contemplating  the  rela- 
tions borne  by  one  thought  to  another'';  imagination,  "as  mind 

1  Mrs.  Shelley,  Biographical  and  Critical  Notes,  Poetical  Works,  vol.  I, 
p.  lviii. 

2  Alastor,  20-9. 


206    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

acting  upon  those  thoughts  so  as  to  colour  them  with  its  own 
light,  and  composing  from  them  as  from  elements,  other 
thoughts,  each  containing  within  itself  the  principle  of  its  own 
integrity."  l  "Reason,"  he  says,  "respects  the  differences,  and 
imagination  the  similitudes  of  things.  Reason  is  to  imagination 
as  the  instrument  to  the  agent,  as  the  body  to  the  spirit,  as  the 
shadow  to  the  substance."  2  The  creative  power  he  considers 
the  prime  agent  of  human  knowledge  because  it  brings  to  con- 
sciousness and  vitalizes  what  reason  has  presented  to  our  con- 
templation; because  through  it  alone  knowledge  becomes  an 
active,  operant  part  of  one's  being.  But  while  agreeing  with 
Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  in  this  recognition  of  the  shaping 
power  of  the  imagination  and  its  supreme  place  in  men's  higher 
intellectual  and  spiritual  life,  Shelley  was  at  one  with  Ben 
Jonson  and  Dryden  in  his  enthusiasm  for  reason.  He  thus  took 
a  long  step  toward  reconciling  the  claims  of  the  intellect,  the 
watchword  of  the  previous  century,  with  those  of  the  imagina- 
tion, the  shibboleth  of  his  own  generation. 

The  vital  relationship  existing  between  our  rational  and 
imaginative  faculties  and  the  consequent  wholeness  of  the 
higher  intellectual  life  was  as  essential  a  part  of  Shelley's 
social  philosophy  as  of  his  theory  of  poetry.  The  imagination 
he  regarded  as  not  only  the  power  through  which  individuals 
might  grow  to  happiness  and  goodness,  but  as  the  faculty  of 
human  nature  on  which  every  gradation  of  their  progress 
depends.3  Its  work  is  not  done  when  it  has  imaged  forth  the 
ideas  that  are  to  rule  the  future;  it  has  a  further  office  in  bring- 
ing home  to  the  heart  of  mankind  the  truths  that  it  reveals. 
This  socialization  of  ideas  Shelley  considered  the  special  func- 
tion of  the  imagination:  ignorance  and  evil,  due  far  less  to  the 
lack  of  what  is  usually  called  knowledge  than  to  an  isolating 
poverty  of  sympathy,  are  to  be  overcome  chiefly  by  that  en- 
largement of  intelligent  understanding  which  unites  individuals 

1  A  Defence  of  Poetry,  Prose  Works,  vol.  m,  p.  99. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  100. 

*  Speculations  on  Morals,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  309. 


SHELLEY'S   DEMOCRACY  207 

in  a  community  of  purpose  and  action.  The  higher  emotional 
life,  which  contains  in  itself  the  essential  elements  of  poetry,  he 
held  to  be  as  necessary  for  the  maintenance  and  growth  of  any 
true  society  as  for  the  advance  of  literature  and  the  arts.  The 
connection  between  imaginative  and  general  social  develop- 
ment he  found  amply  illustrated  in  history,  both  political  and 
literary,  but  particularly  in  the  drama,  which  has  invariably 
reached  its  highest  excellence  as  the  community  has  come  near- 
est to  perfection,  and  fallen  into  decay  with  the  corruption  of 
manners  and  the  extinction  of  those  energies  which  sustain  the 
soul  of  social  life.1  This  interdependence,  so  evident  in  the  case 
of  the  drama,  exists  between  all  poetry  and  the  state;  the  two 
flourish  together,  the  periods  of  their  greatness  closely  coincid- 
ing, and  a  decline  in  imaginative  power  always  heralding  a  col- 
lapse of  material  civilization.  Shelley's  conception  of  the  imag- 
ination as  the  essentially  social  faculty  was  the  conditioning 
factor  in  all  his  theories  of  reform:  it  offered  the  ideal  of  com- 
munity as  of  individual  life,  prescribed  the  means  by  which 
that  ideal  might  be  attained,  and  contained  "within  itself  the 
seeds  .  .  .  of  .  .  .  social  renovation."  2 

It  is  a  corollary  of  this  article  of  Shelley's  creed,  that  he 
believed  the  noblest  poetry,  like  the  truest  virtue,  to  be  the 
product  of  a  refined  and  civilized  life;  that  is,  of  a  life  in  which 
spiritual  perceptions  and  spiritual  powers  rule  over  mate- 
rial conditions.  The  Defence  of  Poetry,  in  which  his  ideas  of 
the  moral  and  social  functions  of  the  imagination  are  most 
fully  worked  out,  was  called  forth  by  Peacock's  Four  Ages  of 
Poetry ,  which  defended  the  theory  that  poetry  was  the  product 
of  the  more  ignorant  and  barbarous  ages  and  so  is  destined  to 
pass  away  as  the  world  grows  to  civilization.  This  attack  on 
what  Shelley  considered  the  higher  morality  of  art  brought 
forth  an  answer  in  the  Defence,  which  reminds  us  of  Sidney's  in 
its  loftiness  of  style  as  well  as  in  its  exalted  conception  of  the 
office  of  poetry.  Shelley  bases  his  plea  for  poetry  on  the  fact 
that,  as  it  is  at  once  the  creation  and  the  creator  of  spiritual 

1  A  Defence  of  Poetry,  Prose  Works,  vol.  in,  pp.  117-18.  2  Ibid.,  p.  120. 


208    SOCIAL  STUDIES   IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE 

and  intellectual  forces,  it  can  exist  only  as  those  forces,  actu- 
ally or  potentially,  make  up  the  substance  of  men's  lives. 
Barbarous  and  rude  nations,  so  long  as  they  remained  under 
the  tyranny  of  material  necessity,  were  incapable  of  poetry, 
because  they  were  without  any  true  imaginative  insight.  But 
the  tyranny  of  matter  oppressed  the  imaginative  life  of  the 
early  nineteenth  century  hardly  less  than  that  of  the  barbarous 
past;  the  age  crushed  by  nature  and  the  age  boasting  its  com- 
mand over  nature  were  alike  negative  and  poverty-stricken 
because  alike  controlled  by  the  forces  that  they  should  govern. 
Nor  is  this  slavery  due  only  to  poverty  or  to  its  counterpart, 
luxury;  the  higher  life  is  to-day  crushed  by  the  multitude  of 
our  intellectual  as  well  as  of  our  material  possessions;  it  is  over- 
powered by  the  mass  of  external  facts  that  men  have  as  yet 
neither  understood  nor  assimilated.  "We  have,"  says  Shelley, 
"more  moral,  political,  and  historical  wisdom,  than  we  know 
how  to  reduce  into  practice;  we  have  more  scientific  and  eco- 
nomical knowledge  than  can  be  accommodated  to  the  just  dis- 
tribution of  the  produce  which  it  multiplies.  The  poetry,  in 
these  systems  of  thought,  is  concealed  by  the  accumulation  of 
facts  and  calculating  processes  ...  we  want  the  generous  im- 
pulse to  act  that  which  we  imagine;  we  want  the  poetry  of  life: 
our  calculations  have  outrun  conception;  we  have  eaten  more 
than  we  can  digest."  1  The  realization  of  what  we  know,  lost 
in  our  very  attempt  to  master  the  external  universe,  will  gradu- 
ally be  recovered  as  knowledge  of  this  universe  becomes  a  part 
of  ourselves,  and  as  a  clearer  view  of  moral  truths  restores  the 
balance  between  our  inner  and  outer  natures.  Through  poetry 
alone,  which  "compels  us  to  feel  that  which  we  perceive,  and  to 
imagine  that  which  we  know,"  2  can  this  balance  be  restored 
and  a  materialistic  age  escape  the  dominance  of  the  lower  pow- 
ers; we  cannot  be  truly  free  until  a  Dante  or  a  Shakespeare,  a 
Milton  or  a  Bacon,  a  Raphael  or  a  Michael  Angelo,  arouses  the 
mind  to  such  activity  and  energy  as  will  make  it  the  master 
rather  than  the  slave  of  the  phenomenal  world. 

1  A  Defence  of  Poetry,  Prose  Works,  vol.  m,  pp.  134-5.       2  Ibid.,  p.  140. 


SHELLEY'S  DEMOCRACY  209 

But  if  it  is  only  through  poetry  that  we  can  thus  control  ex- 
perience, the  greatest  poetry  is  itself  possible  only  in  a  social 
order  which  allows  free  play  to  men's  sense  of  beauty  and  ac- 
quaints them  familiarly  with  goodness.  The  almost  universal 
lack  of  these  conditions  Shelley  considered  the  chief  reason  why 
poetry  has  hitherto  occupied  itself  with  suffering  and  sorrow; 
while  ignorance  of  beauty  and  insensitiveness  to  it  continue,  he 
says,  "  it  often  requires  a  higher  degree  of  skill  in  a  poet  to  make 
beauty,  virtue,  and  harmony  poetical,  that  is,  to  give  them  an 
idealized  and  rhythmical  analogy  with  the  predominating  emo- 
tions of  his  readers,  —  than  to  make  injustice,  deformity  and 
discord  poetical."  l  It  is  because  humanity  knows  the  darker 
passions  and  therefore  sympathizes  with  them,  that  men  prefer 
the  Inferno  to  the  more  truly  beautiful  Purgatorio  and  Paradiso 
and  are  perpetually  fascinated  by  such  a  character  as  Beatrice 
Cenci,  who,  had  she  been  wiser  and  better,  must  in  present 
conditions  have  been  less  successful  in  "teaching  the  human 
heart,  through  its  sympathies  and  antipathies,  the  knowledge  of 
itself."  2 

Shelley's  perception  of  the  profound  social  significance  of 
the  imaginative  life  related  his  theory  of  poetry  to  the  most 
practical  of  his  efforts  for  reform.  Poetry  was  never  to  him  an 
end  in  itself:  it  was  among  the  chief  means  by  which  the  highest 
ends  of  humanity  might  be  attained.  True  to  this  faith,  when 
forced  by  circumstances  to  turn  from  active  efforts  in  the  cause 
of  reform,  he  supported  himself  by  the  conviction  that  through 
the  indirect  teaching  of  poetry  he  was  moving  mankind  to 
imagine,  and  so  eventually  to  create,  a  better  social  order. 
Nor  was  this  all:  if  the  poet  was  a  reformer,  the  reformer  was 
also  a  poet.  In  his  long  and  earnest  effort  to  bring  about  better 
conditions  in  England,  whether  through  Catholic  Emancipa- 
tion or  Parliamentary  Reform,  through  the  claim  for  freedom 
of  thought  or  for  economic  justice  to  the  oppressed,  he  insisted 
that  only  the  methods  which  he  set  forth  in  his  poetry  should 

1  On  the  Devil,  and  Devils,  Prose  Works,  vol.  n,  p.  402. 

2  Preface  to  The  Cenci. 


210    SOCIAL  STUDIES  IN  ENGLISH   LITERATURE 

be  employed,  that  to  every  situation  should  be  applied  the  doc- 
trines of  hope  and  justice  and  kindliness  whose  general  accept- 
ance he  thought  necessary  to  any  genuine  advance  of  society. 
For  the  time  being  his  teachings  seemed  remote  and  Uto- 
pian :  he  was  dismissed  as  a  dreamer,  while  others,  more  in  sym- 
pathy with  its  limited  and  materialized  ideals,  brought  home 
to  the  age  the  actual  conditions  in  which  men  lived,  the  ends 
that  might  be  here  and  now  attained,  the  means  by  which  the 
practical  worker  could  begin  the  task  of  the  day  or  the  morrow. 
But  while  his  fellow-laborers  were  occupied  with  finding  imme- 
diate solutions  for  immediate  problems,  Shelley  reasserted  the 
fundamental  conceptions  that  even  the  generous  in  their  zeal 
for  speedy  reform  had  forgotten,  and  so  became  the  diviner 
and  prophet  of  the  deeper  brotherhood  and  the  more  genuine 
humanity  that  were  to  inspire  later  efforts.  The  world  that 
he  foresaw  recognizes  as  supreme  only  those  spiritual  forces 
which  unite  mankind  in  realization  of  the  higher  life,  and  it  is  to 
be  created  from  our  present  world  of  violence  and  wrong  by  a 
culture  which  presses  into  its  service  all  the  resources  of  nature 
and  art.  The  way  to  it  may  be  slower  and  more  difficult  than 
Shelley  dreamed.  But  his  vivid  apprehension  of  its  principles, 
his  fervent  advocacy  of  them,  above  all  the  "beautiful  ideal- 
isms "  through  which  he  moved  men  to  desire  its  coming,  make 
him  the  true  poet  of  the  democracy  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Addison,  Joseph,  35-38;  30,  39,  42, 
43,  51,  52,  56,  68,  79;  The  Sir  Roger 
de  Coverley  Papers,  22;  Chevy  Chase, 
36;  Paradise  Lost,  36. 

D'Arblay,  Madame,  56. 

Aristophanes,  187. 

Aristotle,  20,  160. 

Arnold,  Matthew,  70-71;  13,  45,  54, 
59,  172,  175,  198. 

Athenian  Gazette,  The,  or  Athenian 
Mercury,  The,  30,  33,  34. 

Augustine,  Saint,  Confessions,  12. 

Bacon,  Francis,  14-19;  3,  6,  9,  13,  22, 
23,  27,  45,  52,  56,  72,  73,  208;  Letter 
to  Prince  Henry,  6;  The  Advance- 
ment of  Learning,  16;  The  New 
Atlantis,  16. 

Balzac,  Honore  de,  81;  Pere  Goriot, 
109. 

Bayle,  Pierre,  Nouvelles  de  la  Ripub- 
lique  des  Lettres,  49. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  68,  144,  176. 

Blackwood'' s  Magazine,  54,  95. 

Blake,  William,  80,  121. 

Bosanquet,  Bernard,  133. 

British  Critic,  The,  135. 

Brooke,  Stopford,  174. 

Brougham,  Henry  Peter,  53. 

Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  23. 

Browning,  Robert,  170. 

Burke,  Edmund,  81,  89,  90,  105,  118, 
124;  Reflections,  176. 

Burns,  Robert,  68,  80,  88,  90,  121, 
134;  The  Cotters  Saturday  Night,  89. 

Burroughs,  John,  72. 

Byron,  Lord,  55,  65,  77,  163,  170. 

Caird,  Edward,  131. 
Calvin,  John,  Institutes,  10. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  66-69;  7,  56,  59,  71, 
72,  88,  111,  146. 


Casaubon,  Isaac,  20. 

Cave,  Edward,  47,  48. 

Caxton,  William,  26. 

Cellini,  Benvenuto,  12;  Autobiography, 

12. 
Cestre,  Charles,  130,  140,  141. 
Chesterfield,  Lord,  39. 
Cicero,  9. 
Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  56-59;  53, 

63,  64,  65,  66,  105,  117,  118,  130, 
134,  137,  138,  139,  144,  158,  170, 
177,  180,  204,  205,  206;  The  Watch- 
man, 57;  The  Friend,  51,  58;  The 
Ancient  Mariner,  134;  Biographia 
Literaria,  135,  137. 

Connoisseur,  The,  39,  40,  42. 

Corneille,  Pierre,  26,  27. 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  172. 

Covent  Garden  Journal,  The,  39. 

Cowley,  Abraham,  28-29;  25;  Essays 
in  Verse  and  Prose,  28;  The  Garden, 
28;  The  Danger  of  Procrastination, 
28;  Of  Himself,  28;  Of  Solitude,  28. 

Cowper,  William,  39,  80,  121,  130. 

Crabbe,  George,  77-114;  130,  134; 
Tales,  80,  92,  93,  95;  The  Village, 
83,  84,  89,  90,  92,  95,  96,  97;  The 
Newspaper,  82;  The  Parish  Register, 
82,  92,  93,  94,  95,  98,  101;  The  Lib- 
rary, 89;  The  Borough.  92,  93,  95, 
98;  Tales  of  the  Hall,  92,  95;  Ruth, 
106. 

Critical  Review,  The,  49,  50,  134. 

Dante,  Alighieri,  119,  120,  208;  In- 
ferno, 209;  Purgatorio,  209;  Para- 
diso,  209. 

Defoe,  Daniel,  30,  34,  37.  88,  42,  7!); 
Essay  on  Projects,  28,  42;  Review, 
30,  34. 

DeQuincey,  Thomas,  59-60;  45,  63, 

64,  65;  Essay  on  Style,  59;  Autobio- 


214 


INDEX 


graphical  Sketches,  60;  Confessions 

of  an  Opium-Eater,  60. 
Dobson,  Austin,  70. 
Donne,    John,    Paradoxes,    Problems, 

Essays,  Characters,  21. 
Dowden,  Edward,  140,  181. 
Dryden,  John,  26-28;  7,  20,  23,  25,  29, 

42,  52,  71,  72,  158,  206;  An  Essay 

on  Dramatic  Poesie,  25,  42;  Preface 

to  the  Fables,  27;  Absalom  and  Achi- 

tophel,  29. 
Dunton,  John,  30,  33,  34. 
Dyer's  Letter,  33. 

Edinburgh   Review,   The,   51,    52,    53, 

54,  173. 
Elliott,  Ebenezer,  Corn-Law  Rhymes, 

81. 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  7, 13, 16,  145, 

171. 
L 'Estrange,  Sir  Roger,  31,  32,  34. 
Examiner,  The,  39,  54,  62,  63. 

Fielding,  Henry,  37,  39,  42,  43. 
Florio,  John,  14. 
Forman,  H.  B.,  175,  182,  185. 
Francis  of  Assisi,  Saint,  71. 
Freeholder,  The,  33. 
Free-Thinker,  The,  38,  48. 
Friend,  The.  See  Coleridge. 

Galsworthy,  John,  72. 

Gentleman's  Journal,  or  Monthly  Mis- 
cellany, The,  47. 

Gentleman  s  Magazine,  The,  40,  47, 
48. 

Gifford,  William,  54,  56,  64. 

Gisborne,  John,  181. 

Globe,  The,  61. 

Godwin,  William,  126,  147,  163,  171, 
176,  177,  194,  198;  Caleb  Williams, 
109;  Political  Justice,  176,  182. 

Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang  von,  13,  65. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  40-42;  39,  45,  49, 
68,  79,  90;  The  Citizen  of  the  World, 
41,  50;  The  Deserted  Village,  42; 
A  City  Night-Piece,  42. 

Gray,  Thomas,  39,  79. 


Green,  John  Richard,  46,  70. 
Griffith,  Ralph,  49. 
Guardian,  The,  38. 
Guerin,  Eugenie  de,  71. 

Halifax,  Marquis  of,  33;  The  Charac- 
ter of  a  Trimmer,  28. 

Haney,  J.  L.,  49. 

Hazlitt,  William,  63-64;  39,  51,  65, 
80;  The  Round  Table,  39;  The  Spirit 
of  the  Age,  64,  77;  Letter  to  Gifford, 
64. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  21,  23,  26. 

Hooker,  Richard,  19,  23. 

Huchon,  R.,  108. 

Hunt,  James  Henry  Leigh,  61-63;  39, 

64,  65;  The  Old  Gentleman,  21,  63; 
The  Maid  Servant,  63;  An  Earth 
upon  Heaven,  63;  Walks  Home  at 
Night,  63. 

Hutchinson,  Thomas,  120. 
Huxley,  Thomas  Henry,  71. 

Idler,  The,  40,  50. 
Irving,  Washington,  39. 

Jefferies,  John  Richard,  7,  72. 

Jeffrey,  Francis,  Lord,  53,  55,  71,  135. 

Johnson,  Samuel,  39-41;  4,  43,  47,  48, 
50,  56,  81;  Dictionary,  40;  The  Ad- 
vantages of  Living  in  a  Garret,  40; 
Literary  Courage,  40. 

Jonson,  Ben,  19,  21,  158,  206;  Timber, 
15. 

Journal  des  Sgavans,  49. 

Keats,  John,  55,  164. 
Keble,  John,  66. 
Kingsley,  Charles,  172. 

Lady's  Magazine,  The,  48. 

Lamb,  Charles,  60-61;  7,  29,  63,  64, 

65,  68,  177;  Poor  Relations,  21;  The 
Essays  of  Elia,  60,  61. 

Landor,  Walter  Savage,  109,  171. 
Lang,  Andrew,  70. 
Ledger,  The,  41,  50. 
Lee,  Vernon,  11. 


INDEX 


215 


Legouis,  Emile  H.,  139,  163. 
Locke,  John,  44;  Essay  Concerning  the 
Human  Understanding,  44. 

Macaulay,    Thomas    Babington,    56, 

64,  65. 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  81,  112,  160, 

198. 
Marx,  Karl,  173. 
Mercurius  Librarius,  49. 
Meredith,  George,  45,  67,  70,  81,  110; 
The   Amazing    Marriage,    82;    The 

Egoist,  109;  Richard  Feverel,  113. 
Merimee,  Prosper,  71. 
Meynell,  Alice,  72. 
Mill,  James,  54,  176. 
Mill,  John  Stuart,  68-69;  7,  45,  56, 

59,  72,  73,  148,  203;  Autobiography, 

12,  68. 
Milton,  John,  23,  56,  87,  111,  119, 120, 

208. 
Moliere,  Jean  Baptiste  Paquelin,  110. 
Montague,  Lady  Mary  Wortley,  39. 
Montaigne,   Michel   Ey quern  de,   9- 

14;  3,  4,  5,  6,  7,  15,  16,  17,  18,  27, 

29,  37,  43,  60,  68,  72,  73;  Essays, 

10,  11,  12,  14. 
Monthly  Review,  The,  49,  135. 
Morley,  John,  19,  70,  165,  171. 
Morris,  William,  146. 

Newman,   John  Henry,   59,   66,    71; 

Apologia,  12. 
North  British  Review,  The,  173. 
Nouvelles  de  la  Republique  des  Lettres. 

See  Bayle. 

Observator,  The.  See  L'  Est  range. 

Paine,  Thomas,  105;  The  Rights  of 
Man,  176;  The  Age  of  Reason,  182. 

Pater,  Walter,  70-71;  6;  Imaginary 
Portraits.  22. 

Peacock,  Thomas  Love,  The  Four 
Ages  of  Poetry,  207. 

Philips,  Ambrose,  38,  42,  46. 

Plato,  9,  25,  43,  195. 

Plutarch,  Morals,  9. 


Poole,  Thomas,  154. 

Pope,  Alexander,  20,  37,  38,  43,    45, 

78,  79,  87,  111,  119,  121;  An  Essay 

on  Man,  44. 

Quarterly  Review,  The,  54. 

Rambler,  The,  39,  40. 

Rebec,  George,  163,  164. 

Revell,  W.  F„  173. 

Review.  See  Defoe. 

Richardson,  Samuel,  37,  39. 

Richter,  Jean  Paul,  65. 

Rousseau,  J.  J.,  12,  81,  121,  124,  151; 

Confessions,  12. 
Ruskin,  John,  45,  59,  72,  111,  146. 

Saintsbury,  George,  12. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  170. 

Seneca,  Epistles,  9. 

Shaftesbury,  Lord,  43,  45,  78,  121, 
195;  Characteristics  of  Men,  Man- 
ners, Opinions,  Times,  43. 

Shakespeare,  William,  8,  14,  27,  81, 
108,  111,  208. 

Shaw,  George  Bernard,  8. 

Shelley,  Mary  Wollstonecraft,  137, 
187,  205. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  169-210;  55, 
65,  67,  77,  111,  145,  164;  Peter  Bell 
the  Third,  137;  Sonnet  to  Words- 
worth, 137;  Queen  Mab,  172,  174, 
175,  182,  183,  188;  Revolt  of  Islam, 
172,  179,  183,  188,  189,  202;  Prome- 
theus Unbound,  173,  174,  197;  The 
Cenci,  174,  189;  Charles  the  First, 
174,  189;  Alastor,  180,  205;  Epipsy- 
chidion,  180,  181;  The  Necessity  of 
Atheism,  182;  Letter  to  Lord  Ellen- 
borough,  182;  Hellas,  187;  Swellfoot 
the  Tyrant,  187;  Ode  to  Liberty.  1*87; 
The  Mask  of  Anarchy.  188,  199;  The 
Assassins,  193;  The  Coliseum,  193; 
The  Death  of  the  Princess  Charlotte, 
197;  Address  to  the  Irish  People,  202; 
A  Proposal  for  Putting  Reform  to 
the  Vote,  204;  The  Defense  of  Poetry, 
207. 


216 


INDEX 


Shenstone,  William,  79,  154. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  45,  207. 

Smith,  Sydney,  53,  55. 

Smollett,  Tobias,  49. 

Socrates,  25. 

Sophocles,  8. 

Southey,  Robert,  63,  118,  134. 

Spectator,  The,  35-38;  30,  39,  42,  46, 

48,  57,  61,  79. 
Spence,    Joseph,     Essay    on    Pope's 

Odyssey,  43. 
Spenser,    Edmund,    28;    The    Faerie 

Queen,  14;  The  Shepherd's  Calendar, 

117. 
Steele,  Sir  Richard,  34-38;  30,  41,  51, 

52,  79. 
Stephen,  Leslie,  70,  172,  182. 
Stevenson,    Robert    Louis,    39,    70, 

72. 
Swift,  Jonathan,  33,  35,  37,  38,  42. 

43,  67,  79;  Gullivers  Travels,  37. 
Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles,  70,  145, 

171. 
Synge,  J.  M.,  8. 

Tatler,   The,    34-37;  30,  39,  42,    46, 

57. 
Temple,  Sir  William,  28,  33. 
Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  81,  170;  In 

Memoriam,  13;  Early  Poems,  81. 
Thackeray,  William  Makepeace,  The 

Book  of  Snobs,  22. 
Theocritus,  80. 

Theophrastus,  Characters,  9,  20. 
Thomson,  James,  121;   The  Seasons, 

79. 
Tolstoi,  Count  L.  N.,  160. 
Traveller,  The,  61. 


Universal  Chronicle,  The,  50. 
Universal  Magazine  of  Knowledge  and 

Pleasure,  The,  48. 
Universal  Spectator,  The,  38. 

Vision  of  Piers  Ploughman,  The,  20. 
Voltaire,  Frangois  M.  A.,  105. 

Waller,  Edmund,  21. 

Walpole,  Horace,  39. 

Warton,  Joseph,  Essay  on  the  Genius 
and  Writings  of  Pope,  43. 

Watchman,  The.   See  Coleridge. 

Weekly  Memorial  for  the  Ingenious, 
The,  49. 

Weekely  Newes  from  Italy,  Germanie, 
Hungeria,  etc.,  The,  30. 

Westminster  Review,  The,  54. 

Whitman,  Walt,  145,  171. 

Wilson,  John,  55,  64. 

Woodberry,  George  Edward,  91,  109, 
174. 

Wordsworth,  Christopher,  Memoirs, 
122. 

Wordsworth,  William,  117-165;  55, 
58,  59,  63,  65,  73,  77,  79,  90,  92,  109, 
111,  170,  171,  177,  191,  192,  204, 
206;  The  Borderers,  109;  Advertise- 
ment to  Lyrical  Ballads,  117,  118, 
158;  Lyrical  Ballads,  52,  117,  118, 
128,  131,  134,  135;  Preface  of  1800, 
118,  135;  Prelude,  121;  The  Recluse, 
121;  Letter  to  the  Bishop  of  Llandaff, 
136,  147. 

World,  The,  39,  40. 

Wyclif,  John,  67. 

Young,  Edward,  87,  109. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


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